The huge success of ChatGPT last year took everyone by surprise, and many technology companies are scrambling to quickly integrate their take on artificial intelligence into their best-selling products.
Apple has been a bit late to the game on this front, with CEO Tim Cook promising this year that the company will be “pioneering new frontiers in generative AI.”
While the details of the “what” are understandably being kept under wraps, the “how” is now a little more clear. Apple reportedly acquired over 30 AI startups in 2023, and this trend looks set to continue in 2024 with the acquisition of Canadian company DarwinAI.
According to Bloomberg, which revealed the acquisition, DarwinAI is responsible for technology that visually inspects components during manufacturing processes, but Apple is more interested in its efforts to make AI systems “smaller and faster.” There is a possibility that Apple reportedly plans to run his iPhone 16’s AI features locally rather than in the cloud, and this could all be important.
The report added that the acquisition was completed earlier this year, and while Apple would not confirm or deny the report, the company told Bloomberg that it “occasionally acquires smaller technology companies.” Admitted. Even more clearly, DarwinAI’s web footprint has disappeared and founder Alexander Wong’s LinkedIn profile states that he will become Apple’s “Director of Machine Learning Research” in January. It means that there is.
The first fruits of Apple’s artificial intelligence journey should be seen in a few months at WWDC 2024. The World Wide Developer’s Conference is typically held when Apple announces a beta version of its latest version of its operating system, but there is reportedly an internal “edict” that iOS 18 will not include “the company’s large language This is because it is chock-full of “functions that are executed by the model.”
Early rumors suggest the ability for Siri to summarize content and answer questions in ChatGPT style, as well as AI integration with iMessage and AppleCare. Developers attending WWDC may be particularly interested in reports that Apple is also close to releasing generative AI tools for building apps.
Apple tends to make new versions of iOS backwards compatible with many older phones, but some upcoming iPhone AI features may become exclusive when the iPhone 16 arrives.
Apple’s A-series iPhone chips have had a neural engine for machine learning since the iPhone 8’s A11 Bionic processor, but the field of artificial intelligence has come a long way since that chip was developed in 2017. I’m here. If you look at it through that lens, that might be telling you something. The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro may use the same chipset again. Perhaps the best on-device AI capabilities will require significant hardware enhancements, and chip parity will need to become the norm again.
