Apple's Leap Towards Generative AI: Tim Cook Promises Groundbreaking Innovations
In the recent annual shareholders meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook has made an ambitious promise - Apple is set to "break new ground" in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) this year, offering a fresh future trajectory for the tech giant. This announcement arrives as the company has reportedly abandoned its extensive plans for electric vehicle (EV) development, with some staffers from the EV project now redirected to various GenAI initiatives. Compared to other big tech companies, Apple's journey with GenAI has been relatively slow and cautionary, focusing on a more deliberate, consumer-friendly approach.
Despite briefly mentioning the technology in its recent press events, Cook confirmed during the Q1 earnings call that Apple was working on GenAI internally. Mark Gurman from Bloomberg reports that Apple is planning to enhance Siri and iOS’ built-in search tool, Spotlight, with GenAI models to handle more complex queries and conduct sophisticated multi-turn conversations.
The company is also considering AI-powered features to create presentation slides in Keynote, playlists in Apple Music, and offer coding suggestions in Xcode. Some of these features might find a place in the upcoming versions of iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. In addition to these gradual steps towards GenAI development, Apple engineers have co-authored an increasing number of GenAI-related academic and technical papers describing systems like animated 3D avatars and Keyframer, a tool that animates static images.
Apple has also made a strategic move towards open source, publishing several models and tools for GenAI-based software, such as Ferret and MGIE. Apple shows no sign of slowing down on its GenAI investment, reportedly investing $1 billion a year, with projects such as proprietary large language model Ajax and an internal chatbot called Apple GPT.
It is even speculated that there could be new hardware releases, with iPhone 16 models rumored to feature a significantly upgraded Neural Engine for improved AI processing. These developments hint at Apple’s accelerating focus on GenAI, creating blossoming opportunities for transformative tech advancements.