Apple faced a tough week as the Department of Justice accused the tech giant of violating antitrust laws by using the iPhone to stifle competition in the smartphone market. This move has made it “extremely difficult and expensive” for consumers to move outside the Apple ecosystem. It remains to be seen how this legal battle will unfold.
Despite this setback, Apple made significant strides in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) in March. The company has been relatively secretive about its AI investments, rumored to total $1 billion annually. However, CEO Tim Cook has expressed excitement about the potential of generative AI, stating that AI and machine learning are integral to almost every product Apple ships.
One notable development is Apple’s reported partnership with Google to bring the search giant’s Gemini AI model to the iPhone. While this collaboration could benefit Google, it also highlights the increasing importance of gen AI in smartphones. With iOS powering millions of iPhones, Apple has the potential to drive gen AI into the mainstream.
Furthermore, Apple’s research paper detailing the company’s work on training large language models for gen AI chatbots signals a significant advance in AI technology. The paper describes new methods for training models on text and images, with the aim of integrating these technologies into Siri, Messages, Apple Music, and other services.
Apple also acquired Canadian AI startup DarwinAI, which uses AI for visual inspection during the manufacturing process. While Apple has been less forthcoming about its AI plans compared to rivals like Google and Microsoft, the company has already integrated AI features into its products, such as the synthetic voice Personal Voice and the computer vision tool Live Text.
In the wider AI landscape, Microsoft announced expansions to its gen AI assistant Copilot and hired the co-founder of DeepMind to lead its new AI division. As the AI race heats up, tech experts and AI face off in CNET’s new video series “Expert vs. AI,” exploring topics like electric vehicle adoption.
Award-winning author Salman Rushdie reassured fellow novelists that AI tools like ChatGPT are not yet capable of replicating their unique writing styles. Despite advances in AI, Rushdie found ChatGPT’s attempts at mimicking his prose to be “a bunch of nonsense,” highlighting the continued importance of human creativity in storytelling.