Apple owns hundreds of website domains, but now it has added "iWork.ai," which may indicate Apple plans to highlight artificial intelligence capabilities in its suite of apps. Apple prefers to call its apps by their individual names, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, but occasionally still refers to them collectively as iWork. This is due to Apple combining these three software with the iLife series (including iMovie, GarageBand, etc.) suite.
The last bundled version of the suite of apps was released back in 2009, when Apple released iWork '09, which also launched iwork.com in an attempt to add collaboration features to the apps, but the site is no longer active.
According to the website BuyAIdomains.com, Apple has now bought the domain name, which the report somewhat exaggeratedly infers that this is a "groundbreaking" and "bold move" that "heralds the relaunch of iWork... to compete with Microsoft Office and Google Docs."
Apple often buys large numbers of domain names just to prevent other companies from grabbing them, and it may even buy them because they are apparently common misspellings, which is why "zpple.com" can go to apple.com.
As early as 2011, a website called DomainGang counted that Apple owned 543 different website domain names. There will probably be hundreds more over the next few years, and importantly, having a domain name doesn't mean you have to build a website there.
Therefore, it is possible that iWork.ai is indeed a signal that Apple plans to relaunch Pages, Numbers and Keynote. However, if this is the case, it is estimated that Apple is likely to acquire domain names such as Pages.ai, Numbers.ai, Keynote.ai and iCloud.ai.
Because of how websites are registered, it's often not clear which business owns a domain name, and Apple in particular may use intermediaries to hide its operations. Currently, iCloud.ai and Keynote.ai are registered under the name of a company in California, Pages.ai is registered under the name of a company in Rockford, Illinois, and Numbers.ai is registered under the name of a company in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Additionally, Numbers.ai is currently listed as a domain name available for sale, something Apple is unlikely to do.
Most reports claiming Apple will make a big push into AI at WWDC 2024 expect Apple to adopt AI across its operating systems (specifically iOS) rather than targeting specific apps.