Apple Expanding Boston-Based Research Team Working on Siri Speech Recognition
Last year, we highlighted a profile of Apple's Boston-area speech technology team speculated to be working on enhancements to Siri. The group's efforts appear to have been ramping up since that time, with a June report claiming Apple is seeking to eventually move away from the Nuance-powered system currently used for Siri.
Apple's team in Cambridge appears to still be growing, with BetaBoston reporting Apple has leased 13,000 square feet of new space to house the team.
Several commercial realtors tell me that the Cupertino company has leased more than half a floor at One Broadway, an MIT-owned building that also houses Facebook’s small local team, several venture capital firms, and the Cambridge Innovation Center. The new office, about 13,000 square feet on one of the building’s upper floors, is a major expansion for Apple, which currently has a small team on the building’s fifth floor.
Earlier reports had noted Apple's recruitment of several former Nuance employees for the team, and BetaBoston reports Apple has recently added members from Amazon, research and development firm BBN Technologies, and data management firm Actifio.
Apple has reportedly not yet begin building out its new space in Cambridge, but it could house up to 65 employees once completed.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
I wouldn't get anybody in Boston to work on speech recognition technology. That is probably why Siri can't understand what the rest of us are talking about.
"Siri, where can I find the best chowder?"
Siri: I'm sorry, but I cannot understand what you are saying.
"Where can I find really good chowder nearby?"
Siri: I'm sorry, I am still having trouble understanding you.
"WAH IS SOME WICKED CHOWDAH?"
Siri: Drive 2 blocks east and turn left, your destination will be on the right.
Of course the more work being done to Siri the better!