Apple reportedly purchased DarwinAI, a small startup previously based in Waterloo, Ontario. The company developed software that might make artificial intelligence systems running on an iPhone or other computer more efficient.
Apple promised that it’ll have big AI-related announcements later this year, and the acquisition will help the company build the necessary software.
New generative AI features are expected to be a highlight of iOS 18, and a skilled artist created a concept video that presents an early look at how they might work.
The video also shows other suggested upgrades, like bringing Split View — Apple’s multitasking feature that lets two apps appear side by side on iPad (and Mac) — to the iPhone.
In a somewhat shocking development, Apple reportedly completely canceled all development on its self-driving car program on Tuesday.
The company is shifting its emphasis to artificial intelligence, instead.
Google Chrome uses artificial intelligence in a new experimental tool that makes it easier to start writing or improve something already written online. “Help me write” can punch up the content of any text field in the browser.
It’s coming to Mac and Windows, and is just the latest AI addition to Chrome.
The latest demonstration of Apple’s AI expertise is Keyframer, software that turns an image into a video based on natural language instructions.
It offers an early glimpse at the type of AI tools that might come bundled into future versions of macOS or iOS.
Don’t accuse Apple of just waking up to benefits of conversational AI. It reportedly started developers working on voice-driven artificial intelligence systems four years ago.
And the company is now pouring money into the project.
Want to make Siri smart again and help boost Apple’s artificial-intelligence chops across the board? A recent Apple job posting shows it seeks “machine-learning engineers with a background and/or interest in conversational and generative AI.”
“This role will play a critical part in helping Apple change the way humans learn about learning,” the listing noted.
Hard to say if the new engineers will inject more gray matter into Siri, but one source suggests they might work on device-based apps for Apple’s AR/VR headset, expected to show on Monday at WWDC23 Monday.
Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple along with Steve Jobs, warned that generative AI will make scams much easier to pull off.
Woz called for regulation to require AI-generated content to be labeled as such.
Don’t be jealous of Microsoft Bing’s new AI capabilities: A new Shortcut called S-GPT integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot into Apple devices. It works as a conversational search engine but can do much more, including summarizing a webpage and creating an Apple Music playlist from a list of suggested songs.
It’s a Shortcut rather than an app, and it’s free to download. There’s a very small fee for using it.
Talk of artificially intelligent personal robots may make some people think of Terminator and “the rise of the machines,” but relax, there’s likely plenty of time before they take over. All nervous kidding aside, in the meantime, companies like Enabot are putting out affordable robots with practical uses. The company launched one on Tuesday.
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the company released its Ebo Air “social companion robot.” The little rolling orb is designed to keep the home safe and loved ones entertained and connected, from pets to kids to grandparents, the company said.
Apple reportedly bought AI Music, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to create songs in real time.
The technology will most likely be integrated into the Apple Photos application for creating background music for slideshows and video montages.
Apple reportedly bought more companies developing artificial intelligence technology over the past five years than anyone else. A prime goal is to make the Siri voice assistant smarter, according to GlobalData, the market-research firm that compiled a list of AI-related acquisitions by many companies.
Apple purchased Xnor.ai, a company that creates artificial intelligence software for mobile devices. The acquisition will apparently lead to AI applications running directly on iPhones, iPads, etc., not outsourced to the cloud. This should make these tasks more private and quicker.
Apple bought a small startup that created an app that used machine learning to auotomically find news articles users would be interested in.
The acquisition of Laserlike is expected to bolster Apple’s artificial intelligence efforts.
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.
Neural machine translation (NMT) has made the online version of Google Translate more accurate for years. Today, this AI feature was added to the iOS and Android apps so it can be used offline.
NTM allows the software to learn over time to create better, more natural translations. And this function is available while traveling without a local data plan.
John Giannandrea used to run Google’s artificial intelligence division, but now he works for Apple. He’s leading the drive to make the company’s Siri voice assistant smarter, a goal many would agree is overdue.
This is the most high-profile move yet in Apple’s ongoing drive to hire more talent for the Siri team.
The image-identification technology in Google Photos is now in the iOS version of this software. Google Lens can find objects and text in pictures and then provide more information. For example, by examining a photo of a business card, the artificial intelligence can pull out all the contact information.
Powering your home with Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant is now a lot cheaper, as the company has officially unveiled an updated version of the Echo Dot speaker.
