Apple has significantly ramped up its spending on artificial intelligence, according to a new report from The Information that highlights Apple's AI and machine learning research.
Though Apple's AI chief John Giannandrea is said to be skeptical of AI chatbots, he established a team that is working on conversational AI four years ago. We have heard prior rumors about "Apple GPT" from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman in July said that Apple was experimenting with large language models, and some Apple employees have access to an "Ajax" internal chatbot.
With the 2022 debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, chatbots suddenly became the must-have feature. Microsoft and Google have both launched chatbots, but there are so far no signs that Apple has a consumer-oriented product launching in the near future.
Apple's "Foundational Models" team that works on conversational AI includes just 16 people, but Apple is spending millions of dollars per day training its language models. Training large language models requires a lot of hardware, and as an example, OpenAI Sam Altman said the company spent more than $100 million for GPT-4.
According to The Information, Apple has other AI goals. The company is aiming to develop a feature that would allow a voice assistant like Siri to automate multi-step tasks. That functionality is available on the iPhone today, but workflows must be manually set up using the Shortcuts app.
The Siri team could have multi-step voice-controlled automation ready for use in iOS 18.
Apple also appears to have AI teams that are working on software to generate videos and images and multimodal AI that works with images, video, and text. The aforementioned Ajax chatbot that Apple is working with is supposedly more capable than the original ChatGPT 3.5 and has been trained on 200 billion parameters, but OpenAI's newer models are more powerful.
Following nearly two years of rumors about a fourth-generation iPhone SE, The Information today reported that Apple suppliers are finally planning to begin ramping up mass production of the device in October of this year. If accurate, that timeframe would mean that the next iPhone SE would not be announced alongside the iPhone 16 series in September, as expected. Instead, the report...
Key details about the overall specifications of the iPhone 17 lineup have been shared by the leaker known as "Ice Universe," clarifying several important aspects of next year's devices. Reports in recent months have converged in agreement that Apple will discontinue the "Plus" iPhone model in 2025 while introducing an all-new iPhone 17 "Slim" model as an even more high-end option sitting...
Wednesday July 24, 2024 9:06 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today shared alleged specifications for a new ultra-thin iPhone 17 model rumored to launch next year. Kuo expects the device to be equipped with a 6.6-inch display with a current-size Dynamic Island, a standard A19 chip rather than an A19 Pro chip, a single rear camera, and an Apple-designed 5G chip. He also expects the device to have a...
Thursday July 25, 2024 5:43 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple typically releases its new iPhone series around mid-September, which means we are about two months out from the launch of the iPhone 16. Like the iPhone 15 series, this year's lineup is expected to stick with four models – iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max – although there are plenty of design differences and new features to take into account. To bring ...
Apple’s iCloud Private Relay service is down for some users, according to Apple’s System Status page. Apple says that the iCloud Private Relay service may be slow or unavailable. The outage started at 2:34 p.m. Eastern Time, but it does not appear to be affecting all iCloud users. Some impacted users are unable to browse the web without turning iCloud Private Relay off, while others are...
Apple is planning to release at least one iPhone 17 model next year with mechanical aperture, according to a report published today by The Information. The mechanical system would allow users to adjust the size of the iPhone 17's aperture, which refers to the opening of the camera lens through which light enters. All existing iPhone camera lenses have fixed apertures, but some Android...
Considering how Google and Amazon are decreasing work on their voice assistants due to them not making enough money, I think Apple actually has a shot at taking the first place trophy next year for voice assistant for the first time since they were the only option… That would be a wild shake up in the state of affairs.
