Tim Cook says Apple will ‘break new ground’ in GenAI this year

Picture Credit: Apple

Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner is promising that Apple will “break new floor” on GenAI this 12 months.

Cook dinner made the pronouncement through the firm’s annual shareholders assembly at this time, 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 undertaking had been reassigned to work on varied GenAI initiatives, according to multiple publications.

Apple, not like a lot of its Huge Tech rivals, has been gradual to put money into — and ramp up — GenAI.

Throughout the firm’s Q1 earnings name, Cook dinner mentioned Apple was working internally with GenAI however that it was taking a slower, extra deliberate method to customer-facing incarnations of the know-how. Certainly, Apple’s solely briefly talked about GenAI in its latest press conferences and bulletins, equivalent 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 purpose of enabling each to reply extra advanced queries and deal with subtle multi-turn conversations. Apple can also be mentioned to be exploring AI-powered options to permit customers to routinely generate presentation slides in Keynote and playlists in Apple Music, in addition to GenAI-powered coding ideas in Xcode, the corporate’s app growth 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 rising variety of GenAI-related educational 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 photographs.

Conspicuously, Apple’s additionally revealed a slew of open supply fashions and instruments for creating GenAI-powered software program in latest months.

Ferret, launched in October, is a chatbot constructed on prime of an present open supply mannequin, Vicuna, whereas MGIE, launched earlier this 12 months, is a mannequin that may modify photographs based mostly on pure language instructions.

Bloomberg reported in October that Apple was investing $1 billion a 12 months to make amends for GenAI, together with efforts like a proprietary giant language mannequin known as Ajax and an inside chatbot referred to 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.