It is no secret that Apple is late to the generative synthetic intelligence celebration, with ChatGPT and opponents from Microsoft and Google already available on the market. However its entry to the gen AI sphere might be coming quickly: on Thursday, Bloomberg reported that earlier this 12 months, Apple acquired DarwinAI, a Canadian startup.
DarwinAI is finest identified for its work in making AI techniques smaller and sooner. It additionally labored on AI know-how for visually inspecting parts throughout manufacturing. Apple has already built-in dozens of DarwinAI’s workers into the corporate, together with co-founder Alexander Wong, based on Bloomberg.
Apple did not instantly reply to a request for remark and has but to announce the acquisition, but it surely did inform Bloomberg that it “buys smaller know-how corporations every so often.”
Nevertheless, the indicators are all there. DarwinAI’s social media accounts and official web site have been shut down, and Wong’s LinkedIn account exhibits that he began at Apple because the director of machine studying analysis in January 2024.
Apple’s plans for DarwinAI
The massive query, although, is what Apple plans to do with DarwinAI. Based on MacRumors, Apple bought 32 AI startups all through 2023, which makes DarwinAI the newest in a protracted listing of comparable acquisitions. Apart from Apple GPT, an AI chatbot that Apple reportedly makes use of internally, the corporate has been tight-lipped about its AI plans.
The corporate has been teasing plans that might be AI-related, although. CEO Tim Prepare dinner advised buyers throughout a quarterly earnings name in February that Apple “has some issues that we’re extremely enthusiastic about that we’ll be speaking about later this 12 months.” Throughout that very same name, Prepare dinner stated Apple’s modus operandi “has all the time been to do work after which discuss work, and to not get out in entrance of ourselves, so we’ll maintain on to that.”
For now, the corporate’s use of AI in current merchandise is restricted to the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional and a number of AI-powered options in iOS 17, together with AI smarts within the iPhone digital camera and the power to digitally clone your voice. Given DarwinAI’s expertise with making AI techniques smaller and sooner, an informed guess can be that the corporate’s know-how will assist add extra AI options to iOS 18.
Apple’s subsequent OS is predicted to be a big improve over iOS 17. Prepare dinner teased AI and generative AI already, with rumors circulating that Apple has instructed engineers to create as many AI options as potential. If the iPhone 16 finally ends up being a minor improve, as some rumors recommend, then iOS 18 could even change into the larger story for Apple in 2024. We’ll nearly actually be taught extra in June throughout Apple’s WWDC, the place Apple sometimes previews the subsequent model of iOS.
