Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner is promising that Apple will “break new floor” on GenAI this yr.
Cook dinner made the pronouncement in the course of the firm’s annual shareholders assembly right this moment, which got here in the identical week the corporate reportedly scuttled its multibillion-dollar, decade-long plan to construct an EV. A number of the workers on the EV mission have been reassigned to work on varied GenAI initiatives, according to multiple publications.
Apple, not like lots of its Large Tech rivals, has been gradual to put money into — and ramp up — GenAI.
Throughout the firm’s Q1 earnings name, Cook dinner stated Apple was working internally with GenAI however that it was taking a slower, extra deliberate strategy to customer-facing incarnations of the expertise. Certainly, Apple’s solely briefly talked about GenAI in its latest press conferences and bulletins, corresponding to when it launched new autocorrect and textual content prediction options in iOS final fall.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is planning to improve Siri and iOS’ built-in search instrument, Highlight, with GenAI fashions, with the objective of enabling each to reply extra complicated queries and deal with subtle multi-turn conversations. Apple can also be stated to be exploring AI-powered options to permit customers to robotically generate presentation slides in Keynote and playlists in Apple Music, in addition to GenAI-powered coding recommendations in Xcode, the corporate’s app improvement platform.
A few of these — or none — might arrive within the subsequent variations of iOS, macOS and iPadOS, that are anticipated to be demoed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Convention this summer time.
Maybe telegraphing Apple’s intensifying GenAI focus, engineers on the firm have co-authored an growing variety of GenAI-related tutorial and technical papers. One describes a system that may generate animated 3D avatars from quick movies. One other particulars Keyframer, a instrument able to animating nonetheless pictures.
Conspicuously, Apple’s additionally revealed a slew of open supply fashions and instruments for growing GenAI-powered software program in latest months.
Ferret, launched in October, is a chatbot constructed on prime of an current open supply mannequin, Vicuna, whereas MGIE, launched earlier this yr, is a mannequin that may modify pictures based mostly on pure language instructions.
Bloomberg reported in October that Apple was investing $1 billion a yr to compensate for GenAI, together with efforts like a proprietary giant language mannequin referred to as Ajax and an inner chatbot generally known as Apple GPT — and doubtlessly even new {hardware}. The upcoming iPhone 16 fashions are rumored to be in line for a “considerably” upgraded Neural Engine, Apple’s model of customized on-device chip for accelerating AI processing.
