Siri needs all the AI talent it can get. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple’s is slowly invading the home turf of some of its biggest rivals in Seattle.
The iPhone-maker has reportedly secured more office space in one of the biggest skyscrapers in Seattle, where Amazon, Microsft and Facebook all fight for top tech talent.
Name your price for a jumpstart course on coding for AI and deep learning. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Every day, the fields of deep learning and artificial intelligence grow more relevant. Machine learning is still in its infancy, so now is a great time to start learning. And if you’re interested in gaining some new coding skills for this exploding industry, we’ve got a deal for you.
Apple and IBM are working together to make artificial intelligence apps more impressive. Photo: Apple
Apple has been ramping up its interest in artificial intelligence for the past few years — and its continuing business-focused partnership with IBM is going to help.
Late Monday, one-time rivals Apple and IBM announced that business apps running on Apple devices will soon be able to take advantage of the ability to combine IBM Watson technology with Apple Core ML to create more intelligent apps.
Google is using artificial intelligence to make it easier for you to find the files you need inside Google Drive. Its next update will add an interface that predicts the people and files you’re most likely to want and makes them more visible, speeding up your workflow.
"I don't have these features. Would you like me to search the web for you?" Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Siri kind of sucks, despite its increasingly prominent role in the Apple ecosystem.
With the general verdict on the HomePod being “great speaker, shame about Siri,” what does Apple need to do in order to catch up with its rivals? Here are six Siri improvements we’d love to see Apple implement as soon as possible.
HomePod sounds great, but right now it doesn't have some of the AI tricks of its rivals. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple has been pretty outspoken about marketing HomePod as a high-end speaker that just happens to have Siri, as opposed to a smart speaker built around its AI assistant, like the Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
A new study published by Loup Ventures suggests one reason why: Because Siri is seriously lagging behind its rivals in terms of its functionality and ability to answer questions.
Apple is invested heavily in self-driving tech. Photo: Idiggapple/Twitter
Apple is revving up its efforts to catch its competitors in the self-driving car market.
The company has aggressively expanded its fleet of vehicles used to test its autonomous driving systems, according to a new filing that shows the company added nine times as many cars over the last year.
Apple is invested heavily in self-driving tech. Photo: Idiggapple/Twitter
Apple is investigating new ways to make self-driving care systems drive more like humans, based on a recent patent filing from the iPhone-maker.
The USPTO finally published Apple’s first patent application related to autonomous vehicle systems today, giving some insight into the strategies Apple might use to make its mark in the emerging self-driving car market.
New technology was designed by former Google AI expert. Photo: Foxconn
Apple manufacturer Foxconn is planning to adopt artificial intelligence image recognition systems for quality control in its factories, a new report claims.
The tech could help identify faulty circuit boards or other components, thereby improving Foxconn’s efficiency when it comes to assembling devices. The AI system was developed by Andrew Ng, a machine learning expert who has previously headed up major projects for both Google and Baidu.
Find that sweet vintage guitar on eBay just by snapping a photo. Photo: Freebird/Flickr CC
It just got a whole lot easier to find odd items on eBay. Now, instead of typing in your search criteria, you can just snap a photo of an object, and eBay will search across the site and return any results that look like your photo.
This is great for those times that you have no idea how to describe something, but you totally have to buy it. Or when you see something in an image and don’t know how search for it on Amazon. Or when you see a super-cool vintage blouse/jacket/bag and want to find something similar.
Apple puts a lot of AI tech into Siri. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
A tiny, low-power auxiliary processor that constantly listens for the phrase “Hey Siri” enables one of the most basic features of Apple’s AI assistant.
The processor, embedded in the iPhone’s motion coprocessor, keeps the “Hey Siri” command from running on the device’s main processor all day. That revelation comes in a research paper published today by Apple’s machine learning team. The paper dives deep into how Apple uses AI to power “Hey Siri.”
When you’re out on your bike, you need to be as visible as possible — especially at night. See.Sense ACE is a bike light that uses artificial intelligence that reacts to every moment of your journey, making cycling safer and simpler.
The light improves visibility when you need it most, and ensures you’re seen on the road. It also connects to your smartphone to provide things like theft alerts and cycling stats.
Regaind could give iOS Photos an AI boost. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple has quietly made another acquisition of a little-known startup that could bring some big benefits to iPhone and iPad users in the future.
A small France startup called Regaind was reportedly acquired by Apple. The company specializes in using machine learning to recognize what’s in a photo, which could boost some features Apple already created in its photos app.
Bose's Quietcomfort 35 II wireless headphones are the start of a partnership with Google. Photo: Bose
Apple’s AirPods and Beats headphones are getting some fresh competition from one of the biggest audio companies in the game. And they’re getting a little help from Apple’s rival, Google.
Bose unveiled two new products today. One is its first ever foray into the world of truly wireless earbuds. The other is a pair of brand new noise-canceling headphones that are also designed to work with Google Assistant.
Siri could become a lot more empathetic. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple’s digital assistant Siri could soon become your new psychologist.
According to a new job listing posted by Apple, the company is searching for a software engineer that also has some previous experience in psychology or counseling. Why? Because people are starting to talk to Siri like its a human.
A11 Bionic chip is Apple's most powerful smartphone processor ever. Photo: Apple
The new A11 Bionic processor that powers the iPhone 8 and iPhone X is the most powerful smartphone chip Apple ever created. But making a processor that’s perfect for AI tasks took some big bets by Apple.
In a new interview with the company’s SVP of hardware tech, Johny Srouji, and marketing boss Phil Schiller, Apple reveals how it took three years to come up with the perfect solution.
Siri is set to get some big upgrades with iOS 11. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
For its next act with Siri, Apple is taking some cues from one of the tech world’s biggest sources of inspiration: Hollywood.
With the release of iOS 11 later this month, Siri is set to get some big upgrades. The most notable will be the AI helper’s silky-smooth voice. And according to one Apple exec, the movie Her played a big role in helping the company figure out the changes they should make.
One of Apple's self-driving test vehicles. Photo: Bloomberg
Apple’s effort to build its own self-driving car has hit some more speed bumps in recent weeks.
Some of the best minds working on Apple’s Project Titan team have reportedly left the iPhone-maker to join one of the hottest autonomous vehicle start-ups in Silicon Valley.
Deep learning technology is making Siri smarter. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple has updated its recently-launched machine learning blog to include three new papers, describing Apple’s use of artificial intelligence to improve Siri.
Artificial intelligence is being used for some incredible things, but it’s not always helpful. A new iPhone app that promises to help you identify mushrooms using AI has been labeled “potentially deadly,” and experts say you should steer well clear of it.
Samsung doesn't want to fight HomePod... yet. Photo: Apple
Samsung currently has no plans to take on HomePod with a smart speaker of its own.
Recent rumors have claimed the South Korean company is working on a standalone Bixby device, but a source familiar with its plans says the market is too small to be profitable.
Seeing AI can recognize faces and guess age and emotion. Photo: Microsoft
Its incredible accessibility features make the iPhone the perfect smartphone for the visually impaired. And it just got even better, thanks to a new app from Microsoft that uses artificial intelligence to describe the world around you.
Anna Katrina Shedletsky is a former Apple product design engineer who is using her experience to build AI that helps companies streamline manufacturing. Photo: Instrumental
On this week’s Apple Chat (the podcast formerly known as Kahney’s Korner): I talk with former Apple product design engineer Anna-Katrina Shedletsky about her take on modern manufacturing and how AI will revolutionize factories. She introduces us to her new company, Instrumental, which is using machine learning to help manufacturers identify and fix problems on their assembly lines.
Using her hard-earned experience at Apple overseeing the production of the first Apple Watch and several generations of the iPod, Shedletsky says machine learning is coming fast to manufacturing. Amazingly, almost all consumer electronics products are still assembled by hand — including hundreds of millions of iPhones.
But that’s changing. Manufacturing is undergoing a huge sea change with the advance of robotics and AI.
Macphun adds artificial intelligence to Luminar with its Neptune update. Photo: David Pierini/Cult of Mac
When Macphun entered the imaging software game, it wanted to make products as powerful as Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom yet with fewer clicks to well-styled photos.
Today, Macphun released an update to its all-in-one editing app Luminar that can make a photo beautiful in still fewer steps.
Sitting on a cash pile of billions, Apple’s not a company that’s used to being left behind. But when it comes to artificial intelligence, that’s exactly what has happened in recent years. While companies like Google and Facebook led the way with cutting-edge AI, Apple lagged. It was embarrassing for a company in Apple’s position to miss out on the single best tech revolution taking place at the moment.