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Apple may join Amazon, Google and Facebook in AI partnership group

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Screen Shot 2017-01-26 at 13.07.45
Apple is embracing artificial intelligence for the first time in years.
Photo: Partnership on AI

Apple is reportedly set to join an artificial intelligence research group, Partnership on AI, which also includes Amazon, Alphabet, Google, Facebook and Microsoft among its members.

Apple being admitted into the group could be announced as early as this week, claim sources familiar with the story.

Apple’s next iPhone may come with enhanced Siri

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Sorry, Alexa: Siri still the most widespread AI assistant
Sorry, Alexa: Siri still the most widespread AI assistant
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Siri may be set to get a serious upgrade when Apple launches its next iPhone later this year.

According to the latest rumor out of Asia, Apple is planning to catch up with the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant by creating a better version of Siri that comes with more artificial intelligence skills.

How Samsung plans to blow Siri out of the water

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Viv
Samsung's new assistant is powered by Viv.
Photo: Viv

S Voice, Samsung’s answer to Siri, has been a poor excuse for a virtual assistant for the last four years. But the South Korean company is working on a brand new version for the Galaxy S8 — and it will have features that blow its competitors out of the water.

Apple invests $1 billion in world’s biggest tech fund

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tim cook in a car
Apple invested $1 billion in Didi Chuxing last year.
Photo: Tim Cook/Twitter

Apple confirmed today that is getting into the venture capital game by investing in one of the world’s largest tech funds.

SoftBank’s new Vision Fund received $1 billion from Apple, according to a company spokesperson that revealed the company is investing in the $100 billion fund to gain access to future technology.

Apple offers first glimpse at its secretive AI work

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photos in ios 10
iOS 10's Photos app can automatically recognize content in images.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Researchers on Apple’s artificial intelligence team have published the first ever research paper ever from the iPhone-maker, ending Apple’s long standing ban that safeguarded company secrets.

The paper details methods on how to train AI algorithms to recognize images. Apple’s researchers reveal that they have tried using both computer-generated images as well as real-world images to train to algorithm, but each have serious drawbacks.

Apple is finally ready to spill some of its AI secrets

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Apple is opening up about its AI work.
Photo: Hardmaru/Twitter

In a break from its ultra-secretive attitude toward R&D, Apple is set to start engaging more with the AI academic community by allowing its researchers to publish their work in machine learning journals.

The news was announced by Russ Salakhutd, director of AI research at Apple and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. He made the announcement at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference earlier today.

iPhone camera is the key to Apple’s AR future

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iPhone 7 iSight camera
The iPhone's camera will be an AR portal.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

A secret team of Apple employees are working on a project that will turn iPhone cameras everywhere into a portal for augmented reality.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he’s bullish on the future of AR, and according to a new report the company is working on a total game changer.

How to take better photos and build an Instagram following, this week on The CultCast

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Instagram photography tips
Better Instagram photography awaits you on The CultCast.
Photo: The Gilashark/Instagram

This week on The CultCast: Learn Instagram tips, tricks and techniques to take beautiful iPhone photos and build a massive following. Plus: The crazy exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7 saga ends with a strange twist; rumors point to Macs with radically new e-ink keyboards; and an honest look at Siri versus the AI competition.

This episode is supported by CultCloth, the best way to keep your iPhone 7, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean. Check them out at CultCloth.co and for a limited time save 20 percent with code JetBlack.

Revamped iPads and next-era Apple tech, this week on The CultCast

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Apple's bold vision of future tech inches closer to reality.
Apple's bold vision of future tech inches closer to reality.
Photo: Apple

This week on The CultCast: Revamped iPads coming this spring; Apple lays the groundwork for the next era of personal technology; how smart homes get hacked; Google’s Pixel phone versus iPhone 7; and we reveal our favorite new iOS and Mac apps!

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to build a website that looks beautiful on any device that visits at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10 percent off.

The future is AI, and Google just showed Apple how it’s done

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Under CEO Sundar Pichai, Google is betting big on AI.
Under CEO Sundar Pichai, Google is betting big on AI.
Photo: Google

After decades of showing us the best ways to interact with computers, Apple is lagging on the UI of the future — voice controls powered by smart, conversational AI.

Google, on the other hand, is placing artificial intelligence, in the form of Google Assistant, at the center of its new Pixel smartphones and Google Home smart speaker.

Cupertino’s mastery of the user interface is legendary: Macs, iPods and iPhones made the GUI, the mouse, the scroll wheel and multitouch mainstream. But Apple needs to get into the AI conversation if it’s serious about securing a place in our gabby future.

Apple adds another AI startup to its machine learning team

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Apple adds 5 new vice presidents to its executive lineup
Apple just bought another AI startup.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

Apple has bought another machine learning startup as part of its effort to boost its AI prowesses for features like intelligent search and Siri.

The company that was acquired this time is India/US-based Tuplejump. The startup’s old website has already been taken down, but it appears that it specialized in big-data technologies for businesses.

Apple’s secret strategy: Underpromise and overdeliver

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iPhone 7 colors
Why the critics are wrong who think Apple's lost its touch.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s always been the company that promised us the world. Steve Jobs’ genius was his ability to convince us that every single thing Apple did shifted the Earth on its axis.

Recently, that feeling of magical futurism has faded. Apple events have been preceded by a feeling of “been there, done that.”

Forget the “wireless future” that Apple talked up at yesterday’s iPhone 7 event as it tried to convince us that we really want AirPods and a dongle rather than a headphone jack. If Apple has a strategy in 2016, it’s underpromise and overdeliver.

And it’s working great!

Apple pushes its AI expert hiring spree into overdrive

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Latest AI acquisition shows Apple isn’t sacrificing privacy for machine smarts
Apple's catching up when it comes to all things AI.
Photo: Universal

Don’t tell Tim Cook, but the perception of Apple is that it’s been lagging behind other tech companies like Google and Facebook when it comes to cutting-edge artificial intelligence research.

Things are unlikely to stay that way for long, however, since Apple is currently in the midst of a massive recruitment drive to hire machine learning experts for a variety of different posts throughout the company.

How AI is secretly transforming everything Apple does

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Robot
Apple is investing heavily in machine learning.
Photo: Scott Schaut/Mansfield Memorial Museum

When it comes to the incredibly hot field of AI, Apple has been racing to catch up with Google and Facebook. A new article reveals exactly when Apple’s interest in this area began paying off: July 30, 2014, a.k.a. the date Siri switched over to deep learning.

A type of machine learning built around brain-like “neural networks,” the switch drastically improved on Siri’s accuracy. However, as is typical for ultra-secretive Apple, the company didn’t boast about — or even publicize — its success.

Apple boosts AI efforts by acquiring machine learning startup

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Sorry, Alexa: Siri still the most widespread AI assistant
Turi could make Siri smarter than ever.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s latest acquisition could play a big role in the iPhone maker’s future artificial intelligence products.

Turi, a Seattle-based startup specializing in machine learning and AI, was reportedly acquired by Apple for around $200 million. The startup creates software that gives developers the ability to add AI capabilities that scale automatically, which could certainly be an attractive addition to Apple’s platforms.

iOS 10 won’t collect your personal data without permission

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iPhone SE
Update to iOS 10.3.3 today.
Photo: Apple

Apple is getting deeper into the AI game with iOS 10, which will require users to share some data with Apple so it can make intelligent suggestions, but the company says it will be totally optional.

Starting in iOS 10, Apple plans to use differential data as a way to track users and make Siri better at predicting what you want, while not being a major creeper at the same time. The company hasn’t been very clear about exactly what data it will be collecting, but according to a new report, we now know you will have to opt-in to the service.

Apple gives devs the chance to harness power of neural networks

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A rough approximation of a neural network.
Photo: Fdecomite/Flickr CC

Apple is making a new push into artificial intelligence, giving developers access to the company’s neural network technology in a move that should mean big things for apps you’ll use in the future.

While opening up Siri to third-party developers was the most attention-grabbing news coming out of yesterday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Apple has also revealed that it is will allow developers to tap into the company’s artificial neural network technology. And once the dust is settled, this could turn out to be the biggest development of WWDC, bar none!

Google’s ‘big red button’ kills AI before it can kill us

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GoogleDeepMind-Logotype-Vertical_Black
Google won't let the robots take over.
Photo: Google

Google’s DeepMind team has been working with scientists to create a way in which humans can kill artificial intelligence agents before they can turn on us.

It’s a concern many have as the AI systems being developed by tech giants become more intelligent and more capable — but Google has us covered.

Siri’s sequel beats the heck out of Apple’s AI assistant

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Viv
Viv is going to blow you away!
Photo: Viv

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, creators of the artificial intelligence technology that brought Siri to the iPhone, today showcased a new virtual assistant that’s even more amazing.

Viv, which has been secretly in development for the past four years, is a much more open platform that works closely with a whole bunch of different services to be even more powerful than its predecessor, and to take AI to a whole new level.

Top venture capitalist says Apple should be focused on AI

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Prepare for the Woz-pocalypse
The Apple execs of the future?
Photo: TriStar Pictures

Rightly or wrongly, Apple’s stock taking a prolonged plunge has opened the floodgates for people to hold court about what it is that Apple’s apparently doing wrong — and how the company can be righted again.

Today it was the turn of venture capitalist Fred Wilson, founder and managing partner of Union Square Ventures. His answer: that Apple is failing to invest enough in artificial intelligence and cloud cloud computing.

Ex-Apple designer builds easy-to-use artificial brain

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The Brain by Mike Matas
Good call. We definitely want to teach the machines love before they become self-aware.
Photo: Mike Matas (via YouTube)

We may be a small step closer to the robot wars thanks to former Apple designer Mike Matas.

Matas’ previous work includes user interfaces for Apple’s Maps, Photos, and Camera apps, as well as the Nest smart thermostat. And he showed off his latest creation, an artificial brain called (appropriately enough) The Brain, via a quick demo on YouTube. It’s a neural network that with an expectedly sharp and clean interface, and in the video, he shows how he can teach The Brain to spit out emojis based on different shapes that he draws.

Check it out below.

RealDoll maker envisions a day your ‘companion’ will talk back to you

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Her film Joaquin Phoenix
We don't know if A.I. plus RealDolls would make Spike Jonze's film Her more or less creepy.
Photo: Warner Bros.

This might be the most divisive news of the day: RealDoll creator Matt McMullen is currently working with artificial-intelligence scientists to create a fusion between digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and synthetic companions. It could be the most amazing news you’ve ever heard, or it might be terrifying and make you feel like spiders are crawling on you.

Regardless of how much or little it creeps you out, however, it’s definitely interesting.

Apple scoops up A.I. startup that analyzes users’ emotions

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Emojis
Less emojis, more AI.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

Apple’s latest acquisition is of a small artificial intelligence company called Emotient. The startup has technology that analyzes people’s emotions through their facial expressions.

Apple “buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Apple’s spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. That’s the typical statement Apple gives when snatching up small companies.

It’s not clear yet what Apple has in mind for Emotient, but we sure can speculate.