Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, announces Apple Intelligence.
Apple made a big splash at WWDC 2024 with the announcement of Apple Intelligence (beta version due in the fall), the company's answer to the burgeoning field of generative AI. But while this marks Apple's official entry into the field, the company has been quietly building its “AI army” behind the scenes for years, and continues to do so with over 100 job openings related to data and AI/ML.
Apple continues to prioritize data privacy, with a new system called private cloud computing that emphasizes on-device processing, and is revamping Siri, which debuted about 14 years ago. Through a partnership with OpenAI, Apple Intelligence will integrate access to OpenAI's genAI technology into various experiences, including Siri.
To truly understand Apple's AI ambitions, one must take a peek behind the scenes at the team overseeing its AI strategy, starting with John Giannandrea, senior vice president of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, who joined Apple in 2018. Since hiring Giannandrea from Google, Apple has steadily grown its AI/ML talent under his guidance, including dozens of ML research scientists, engineers, product managers, and data experts focused on everything from core ML infrastructure to intelligent sensing and perception.
Want proof of Apple's commitment to AI? Look no further than their recent job ads. The company is offering big salaries (many over $300,000) to attract the world's best AI talent. Here are the open positions as of June 10 that show where Apple's AI focus is:
| post | position | Salary Range |
|---|---|---|
| Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Frontier AI Technologies | Cupertino, California | $199,800 – $364,100 |
| AIML – Senior Software Engineer, Privacy – Machine Learning Platforms and Technologies | Cupertino, California | $199,800 – $364,100 |
| AIML – Senior Applied Research Leader in Healthcare AI | Seattle, Washington | $189,800 – $346,300 |
| AIML – Senior Manager, Program Office, Data Operations | Cupertino, California | $168,900 – $336,200 |
| Software Engineering Manager – Intelligence Platform | Seattle, Washington | $174,000 – $301,000 |
| Visual Generative Modeling Research Engineer | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| Senior Privacy Engineer – Generative AI and Privacy Technologies | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| Apple Silicon GPU Driver Engineer – Prototyping | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AIML Senior Software Development Engineer (Testing) | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AIML Senior iOS/macOS Engineer, Siri and Information Intelligence | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AIML – Software Engineer, Machine Learning Platforms and Technologies | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist, AIML – Biosignal Intelligence Group | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AIML – Principal Staff Software Engineer, Privacy – Machine Learning Platforms and Technologies | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AIML – Machine Learning Software/Hardware Co-Design Engineer, Machine Learning Platform and Infrastructure | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AIML – Full Stack ML Engineer, LLM Optimization | Cupertino, California | $170,700 – $300,200 |
| AI Architect – Large Scale Language Models and Generative AI | Cupertino, California | $199,800 – $300,200 |
What AI titles can tell us about Apple's strategy
These high-paying jobs The report offers a glimpse into Apple's specific priorities and how the company is trying to differentiate itself in a crowded marketplace filled with rivals including Apple. Google, Microsoft, and Meta is a daily occurrence Billions of dollars invested From $ StayFrontline AI space.
Given Apple’s longstanding commitment to protecting user privacy, it’s not surprising that several job titles directly address this in the context of AI: For example, the “Senior Privacy Engineer – Generative AI and Privacy Technologies” role highlights a focus on building privacy-preserving AI solutions from the ground up.
The diversity of roles, from research scientists to software engineers, highlights the wide net Apple is casting with its AI efforts: These jobs range from strengthening core infrastructure (“Machine Learning Platform and Technology”) to pushing the boundaries of research (“Visual Generative Modeling,” “Biosignal Intelligence Group”).
Job titles like “Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Frontier AI Technologies” suggest that Apple isn't content to simply keep up, but aims to be at the forefront.
Apple Intelligence
Learn more about Apple Intelligence
To power Apple Intelligence, the company developed highly performant and efficient foundational models, including on-device models with nearly 3 billion parameters, and much larger server models that are heavily optimized for performance, memory, and power efficiency on Apple hardware. Adapters (tiny neural network modules) allow the foundational models to dynamically specialize for specific tasks while keeping the base model weights fixed.
Apple also highlights its commitment to the Responsible AI principles on its website, ensuring that users' personal data is never used to train models. The company follows the principles of empowering users, representing them faithfully, designing thoughtfully, and protecting privacy. Apple's private cloud computing system prioritizes on-device processing to maintain data privacy.
Human evaluations generally preferred Apple's model over similar open source and commercial models in terms of functionality, safety, and instruction compliance. The model also had a lower violation rate for adversarial safety prompts compared to other models.
In its news announcements and hiring strategy, Apple has signaled its ambition to be more than just a player in the AI market. Only time will tell if it can stand out in a rapidly changing market.
