Artificial Intelligence

Chat AI tech is without a doubt the most exciting thing to have happened in the world of technology for quite some time – providing answers to questions, writing essays, generating working code, or even passing an MBA exam through a conversational UI.

Microsoft announced that a version of ChatGPT will power a conversational search feature within its Bing search engine. Google has been quick to announce that it, too, will use its own AI chatbot, Bard, for searches. Does all this mean that Apple too will climb aboard this next-generation chat AI tech to finally make Siri smarter … ?

Once in a while, Apple announces the acquisition of another company or startup, but now, new research from GlobalData shows that Apple is in fact investing heavily in artificial intelligence. The research reveals that Apple has acquired more AI companies than anyone else between 2016 and 2020.

A survey of 1,500 tech employees found that 77% of them think that Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have too much power. Only 8% disagreed.

Tech workers were also asked about a wide range of other tech issues, including working with law enforcement, China, and legislating AI…

Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI) chief says that Apple is using machine learning in almost every aspect of how we interact with our devices, but there is much more to come.

John Giannandrea says he moved from Google to Apple because the potential of machine learning (ML) to impact people’s lives is so much greater at the Cupertino company …

While Xnor.ai was best known for its ability to detect people in smart camera feeds, Macworld suggests that Apple’s main motivation for buying the company may have been to make Siri smarter.

The most obvious reason for Apple’s acquisition of Xnor.ai was to improve people detection in HomeKit Secure Video. But as we noted at the time, the company’s tech has broader applications …

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In an interview with CNBC today, the Mayo Clinic’s chair of cardiovascular medicine, Dr. Paul Friedman shared that they have seen promising results using AI to detect an often symptom-less heart defect. It’s called asymptomatic left ventricular dysfunction, which means a weak heart pump. In Mayo Clinic’s studies, they are using AI to read ECGs and finding impressive results identifying weak heart pumps and even predicting individuals who will be at risk in the future.

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Apple and IBM have announced an exciting expansion of the partnership started back in 2014 to bring enterprise apps to iOS devices. The latest step is designed to combine IBM’s powerful Watson AI system with Apple’s Core ML framework to create the smartest mobile apps yet developed.

The companies said that Coca-Cola is currently testing the setup …

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If you’ve ever used Photoshop to select a person in order to place them on a different background, you’ll know what a fiddly and time-consuming process it can be. Adobe has announced an upcoming feature to allow you to get most of the job done with a single click …

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We’re expecting a major revamp of the Snapchat app to land early next month, but it seems the company isn’t holding back everything until then. It’s been quietly rolling out a feature that recognises (some of) the content in your photos, and suggests relevant borders and filters …

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The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) — of which Apple is a member — today has shared a new document outlining AI Policy Principles for the tech industry, the government, and public-private partnerships, as well as projecting how valuable AI could become in the near future.

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Apple’s chief operating officer Jeff Williams attended the 30th anniversary celebrations of A-series chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and took the opportunity to say a few words about the importance of AI in general – and the phone as an AI tool in particular.

I think we’re at an inflection point, with on-device computing, coupled with the potential of AI, to really change the world.

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An augmented reality Sudoku-solving app that only works with completely empty puzzles might be kind of pointless, but it definitely serves as an impressive demonstration of just what can be done when you use the combined power of three Apple frameworks.

Magic Sudoku uses Apple’s image analysis software Vision to read the puzzles, the Core ML framework to solve them and ARKit to present the solution as an overlay on the puzzle itself …

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Apple’s AI expert, Tom Gruber, delivered a TED talk back in April extolling the benefits that AI may provide for us in the years to come. The video of the onstage presentation has now been released and gives us a better glimpse into the future Gruber imagines. His presentation focuses on what he calls “humanistic AI”, the belief that when machines get smarter, so will we.

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Arthur C Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, and Microsoft’s Seeing AI app gets pretty close to qualifying. It’s an app designed to ‘narrate the world’ to people who are blind or visually impaired, and the video demo (below) shows off some incredibly impressive capabilities.

It can, for example, recognize friends, guess the emotions of people from their facial expressions, read text, identify bank notes, identify products from their bar-codes, and even recognize images in apps like Twitter …

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Eddy Cue, Tom Gruber, Alex Acero, Craig Federighi

Tom Gruber, AI expert at Apple, delivered a talk at TED 2017 today to share his thoughts on the future power of computing. According to Axios, Tom Gruber declared that computing should be “used to augment human failings, such as memory.”

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Apple is known for its secrecy when it comes to ongoing product development, but the company is operating a little different with its efforts around artificial intelligence and machine learning. Apple’s director of machine learning, Carlos Guestrin, openly discussed Apple’s plans to grow its engineering presence in Seattle in a new GeekWire interview.

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