Apple has to deal with the “AI race” like any other tech company. That means hiring people to help shape what that means for the company as a whole. And sure enough, the company wants it.
Siri could be the future of generative AI at Apple
Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage these days, and large-scale language models (LLMs) are getting a lot of attention. Generative AI is a system that uses a large dataset as a reference and can input text, images, and other media based on various prompts.
The star product in all of these is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which introduced the ChatGPT-4 model earlier this year. We have seen companies like Google and Microsoft launch their own LLMs with varying degrees of success.
Apple probably won’t launch a product similar to Google’s Bard, but generative AI won’t go unused in some form. To this end, the company posted several different job listings seeking professionals in the field with backgrounds in generative AI.
The job listing states that these engineers should have a background in generative AI, or at least be interested in it.
“AI represents a huge opportunity to improve Apple products and experiences for billions of people around the world. Apple’s Technology Development Group (TDG) is looking for machine learning engineers with backgrounds and interests in generative AI. Leverage innovative generative models to develop your expertise in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) while building foundational applications on top of Apple’s most advanced technology. .”
according totech crunch
, Apple began recruiting new hires for these roles as far back as April 27 of this year. The latest vacancies were announced earlier this week.
Apple AI Goals
Although Apple has not confirmed that it will develop any artificial intelligence products in the future, Tim Cook said generative AI is “very interesting.” But the company has remained cautious so far.
Recently, it was reported that Apple banned its employees from using large-scale language models such as Google’s Bard and ChatGPT in general. In the same report, anonymous sources said Apple was working on a competing product, but could not provide further details. The company may bring the system to things like Siri in the future.
Apple still needs to focus on privacy and security, and as it stands these LLMs can leak data. So it’s no surprise that Apple restricts employee access and use because it doesn’t want its own data out in the world.
It’s no wonder Apple invested in machine learning a long time ago and is looking for ways to extend it in the future. Generation AI is indeed one root.
There have been rumors that Apple will show off something about its new large language model at this year’s WWDC, which starts in early June.
For those who don’t work for Apple and want to try out large scale language models directly on their mobile phones, you can download the official ChatGPT app from the App Store.
