Apple’s self-driving car project may be nearing the end of the road.
After rumors surfaced last month that the company slashed its workforce for Project Titan, Apple confirmed today that 190 employees in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale have been released from the self-driving car project.
Amidst a seemingly never-ending barrage of criticism, Siri is once again looking for a new team leader. After reports of infighting and disagreements about how to advance Siri last year, the internal development team is without direct leadership … again. This time, though, the move was self-inflicted and strategic.
Apple may have been late to the smart speaker game but its HomePod is showing signs it could one day outperform them all.
But only if Apple gives Siri the power.
In Loup Ventures annual smart speaker comparisons, Google Assistant understood all 800 questions and answered nearly 88 percent of them correctly. In its first Loup Ventures test, the HomePod with Siri at the helm misunderstood just three questions and managed to answer correctly nearly 75 percent of its queries.
Apple has promoted John Giannandrea to its executive team as senior vice president of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Strategy.
Giannandrea, who joined Apple back in April of this year after eight years at Google, is responsible for Siri and the Core ML framework. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is “fortune to have John … driving our efforts in this critical area.”
Apple pulled back the curtain on some of the most complicated features of its HomePod smart speaker this morning with a new blog post that details the machine learning tech that goes into its ‘Hey Siri’ detection.
One of the biggest challenges with making a smart speaker is not only figuring out what to listen for but also what sounds to discard in the process. Apple’s engineers have come up with a number of interesting methods to make Siri work even when you’re blasting tunes our of the HomePod’s speakers.
Instagram will be more accessible to the visually impaired thanks to new changes the photo-sharing platform launched today.
“With more than 285 million people in the world who have visual impairments, we know there are many people who could benefit from a more accessible Instagram,” the company wrote on its Info Center page announcing two new tools.
Apple has reportedly acquired an artificial intelligence startup that specializes in on-device machine learning software.
Silk Labs’ technology processes data without sending it to the cloud, which is a perfect fit for Apple’s privacy-conscious approach to AI. It’s not clear how much Cupertino paid for the company when the deal was struck earlier this year.
Tinder co-founder Sean Rad says advances in artificial intelligence could give Siri an exciting new role — matchmaker.
Apple’s virtual assistant is good at simple asks, like serving up the time, the weather forecast or the score from last night’s Warriors game. But the internet is loaded with stories, from frustrating to funny, about Siri’s fails. Siri might get to know your team, but your type?
Google called its new Pixel 3 “the best end-to-end photography experience” Tuesday and has adopted features and marketing strategies that made the iPhone a global success and camera industry game-changer.
But marketing and megapixels will not be where these two smartphone cameras do battle. The competition shifts to artificial intelligence and how it makes each phone camera perform.
A kitchenware company and an app for tracking shots on a basketball court couldn’t be more different. Yet, somehow the two wound up with nearly identical logos.
Such is the case for HomeCourt, whose shining moment Wednesday at the Steve Jobs Theatre got upstaged on social media after Australian company Hutch Kitchen pointed out the similarities.
Apple called the new iPhones‘ A12 Bionic chip “the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone.” And despite the company’s occasional hyperbole and frequent marketing wizardry, it’s not kidding around.
Here’s why the A12 is so exciting — and what that means for Apple’s Core ML machine learning platform.
Mobile phone photography has been through a mostly meaningless megapixel war. Now on to the next battle – the smartphone with the most cameras.
Apple, true to its playbook, will watch while other companies fire opening salvos with smartphones packing three or more lenses.
Siri is quite good at recognizing what we say, but used to run into difficulties with the names of small businesses. That was until Apple developers found a way to make her much better at this task.
In fact, the new system is more than 40 percent less likely to come up with the wrong business name.
Craig Federighi is no longer in charge of Siri. Responsibility for Apple’s troubled voice assistant has been given to John Giannandrea, who is now in charge of all Apple’s artificial intelligence efforts.
Siri is seen as poor competition for Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Assistant. Its weakness is hurting sales of Apple products, including the HomePod.
In 2016, a startup called Relonch started a camera club and next-day image editing service that was largely panned online by photographers.
Who would pay $99 per month to use a camera they will never own plus $1 per professionally retouched photo? The iPhone and other capable smartphone cameras now dominate photography, helping novices and pros make great pictures instantly styled with the touch of an app.
The artificial intelligence industry is exploding. Machines might be coming to take our jobs, but working in AI is also one of the most lucrative gigs you can get, with salaries that reach into the 6 figures. But before you get in on AI, there’s a lot to learn.
Google just took the wraps off its big software lineup for 2018. If Apple executives were watching, there’s a lot they should be worried about.
Artificial intelligence has always been one of Google’s strengths over Apple. But in 2018, the search company is going all out, putting AI in everything. Pretty much every app the company has is getting some new machine-learning tricks in the next few weeks that make certain iOS features look ancient.
Check out the biggest announcements from this morning’s Google I/O keynote.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.