Apple’s newest acquisition of yet one more AI startup offers perception into the tech large’s plans for synthetic intelligence in 2024. The startup, DarwinAI, is a Canadian visible high quality inspection enterprise that has developed methods to make AI programs smaller and extra environment friendly.
Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner has vowed to share extra particulars in regards to the firm’s AI developments in 2024, and this newest acquisition of an organization that makes AI programs run effectively on smaller units might reinforce the concept Apple plans to run AI fashions on-device.
Executing AI algorithms on-device would align with Apple’s privacy-focused view, as this course of retains the consumer’s data on the gadget somewhat than sending it to cloud servers. This strategy not solely provides the consumer the advantage of added privateness but additionally ends in decrease latency and the power to run AI instruments with out web connectivity.
Siri already runs on-device on the iPhone, so Apple is not diving right into a novel idea with on-device AI. Nevertheless, Apple has fallen behind in creating and launching generative AI instruments, which require massive language fashions (LLMs) and programs able to producing content material based mostly on these fashions.
Smaller, pre-trained fashions that run effectively can be finest for working AI on-device. This may increasingly require optimization to cut back AI fashions’ dimension and complexity with out compromising efficiency. GPUs and specialised chips — similar to Apple’s Neural Engine — are additionally methods to hurry up AI computations.
From what little we find out about DarwinAI, it seems that this optimization for on-device execution is, partially, what the corporate was specializing in when Apple purchased it.
Since Apple bought DarwinAI earlier this 12 months, dozens of the startup’s staff have joined Apple’s AI division, as reported by Bloomberg sources who requested to not be recognized as a result of neither celebration has publicly introduced the deal.
One among DarwinAI’s co-founders, Dr. Alexander Wong, has been the director of Machine Studying Analysis at Apple since January, probably giving some indication of when the deal occurred.
Apple has been shopping for increasingly more startups with the intention to fold their respective tech developments, analysis, and expertise into its operations. In 2023, Apple was the chief amongst its opponents in AI acquisition, taking up as many as 32 AI startups. In the identical 12 months, Google acquired 21 AI startups, Meta acquired 18, and Microsoft acquired 17.
As a result of Apple is so behind on the AI race and so secretive about its plans, our ears perk up every time it makes a brand new acquisition of an AI startup or when a morsel of a rumor trickles out.