Apple seems to have gotten to AI a little late, with the new Samsung S24 Ultra shipping with AI support, but recent reports suggest it is investing in something that will set the iPhone 16 apart from other flagship phones.
A Financial Times article about Apple’s new 'boosts’ to AI this week says “Apple is quietly increasing its capabilities in artificial intelligence, making a series of acquisitions, staff hires and hardware updates that are designed to bring AI to its next generation of iPhones.“
The report then goes on to cite research from Morgan Stanley that half of Apple’s job listings talk about “deep learning”, a central part of AI. The most important part of this article is the acknowledgment that recent advancements are being made to run AI functions on-device, as opposed to a cloud-based solution.
AI, the Apple Way
As pointed out by Mrwhosetheboss’ hands-on with the Samsung S24 Ultra, while some of the device's AI functions are on-device, many of the most impressive ones use the cloud. This can be a problem for those with a poor connection or when many people use the same cloud servers at the same time.
However, Apple’s approach is an interesting one as the new Neural Engines in both the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 suggest Apple is working on hardware advancement to further improve on-device AI. This means no waiting around for servers to respond and a generally smoother experience. This comes with the cost of not always working on the newest data, as cloud servers tend to synthesize current phone data at every moment. However, Apple’s focus on security and privacy would hold back a cloud solution anyway as users would likely have to opt in to sharing that data.
Apple is a company known for smooth and easy experiences and on-device AI functionality would only drive this reputation home, even if cloud-based AI has the potential to be more powerful.
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