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Not just Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon. Here is Apple’s silent race towards Artificial Intelligence

7 months ago babelfish

Not just Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon. Here is Apple's silent race towards Artificial Intelligence

Meta, Microsoft and Google set ambitious goals in developing AI products and services. This does not mean that Apple has remained inactive, on the contrary. The Cupertino giant has gone on a shopping spree, acquiring more artificial intelligence and machine learning companies than anyone else.

Microsoft and Google talk a lot about artificial intelligence but have not bought as many startups as Apple.

Big tech like the ones already mentioned but also Meta and Amazon are setting ambitious goals with their artificial intelligence projects unlike the Cupertino giant which tends to remain silent on this topic.

But there's a gap between Apple's public disclosures and its internal efforts, highlights a recent report from Quartz . Since 2017, Apple has been the largest buyer of artificial intelligence and machine learning companies, according to market research firm PitchBook. Apple's AI buying frenzy shows that the technology is truly critical to the future of the company's consumer products, from the iPhone to the MacBook.

Without using the words “artificial intelligence” to describe the emerging technology, Apple this month unveiled a new line of iPhones and a new watch that included improved semiconductor designs that power new AI features. The features greatly improve basic functions like answering a call or taking better pictures.

Additionally, according to a report from The Information from early September cited by The Verge , Apple is investing millions of dollars a day in artificial intelligence. The Tim Cook-led company is reportedly working on multiple AI models across different teams.

All the details.

APPLE'S ACQUISITIONS IN THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SECTOR

In recent years, Apple has purchased AI startups focused on self-driving technology, voice design, music generation and image recognition, according to PitchBook.

With 21 operations, the Cupertino giant is first in the ranking for acquisitions in the AI ​​sector according to the market research company.

Apple's style contrasts with that of Microsoft and Google, which have been very public about AI products but more conservative in acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions have proven difficult given growing antitrust scrutiny, so these companies find ways to work with startups rather than buying them outright, Brendan Burke, an analyst at PitchBook, noted to Quartz .

Just this week, Amazon said it will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, the maker of the AI ​​chatbot Claude . Pairing a large tech company with an AI startup echoes Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI ( the Redmond giant invested $10 billion in the ChatGpt developer ).

[Source Quartz]

THE POSITION OF CEO TIM COOK

The numerous acquisitions of artificial intelligence startups attest to the iPhone maker's interest in the sector, even if it doesn't say a word about it.

As Quartz again reminds us, when asked why Apple avoids discussing its investments in artificial intelligence during a conference call with investors and analysts in August, Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “[We] tend to announce things we don't. as soon as they hit the market, and that's our modus operandi, and I like to stick to that."

A UNIT OF THE CUPERTINO GIANT WORKING ON AI

So Apple prefers not to talk until it has something really substantial to present to the public.

It's certainly working on that: Apple's conversational AI unit is called “Foundational Models,” according to The Information's report. It has “about 16” members, including several former Google engineers. It is headed by John Giannandrea, Apple's head of artificial intelligence, who was hired in 2018 to help improve Siri.

Other teams at Apple are also working on artificial intelligence, The Information revealed. A visual intelligence unit is developing an image generation model, and another group is researching “multimodal artificial intelligence, capable of recognizing and producing images or videos in addition to text.”

These models could serve several purposes. A chatbot that will “interact with customers using AppleCare” is in the works; another would make it easier to automate multi-step tasks with Siri. Those involved in its development tell The Information that Apple's most advanced LLM (large dimensional linguistic model), known internally as Ajax GPT , has been trained on "more than 200 billion parameters" and is more powerful than GPT -3.5 by OpenAI, the basis of the initial version of ChatGPT launched last year.

All facts that demonstrate Apple has already been active in research on generative artificial intelligence for some years.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/non-solo-microsoft-google-meta-e-amazon-ecco-la-corsa-silente-di-apple-verso-lintelligenza-artificiale/ on Sun, 01 Oct 2023 01:19:45 +0000.