Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) takes place in just a few weeks. Everyone expects the company to explain its approach to AI deployment on its platforms. With that in mind, here’s what several months of speculation suggest Apple will announce, though the details remain to be disclosed.
Apple is investing billions of dollars in these plans; R&D spending reached 10.3% of revenue in the second quarter, up from 7.6% in Q1. Given Apple’s accelerating revenue, on a dollar basis this means the company’s R&D spend is up 34% from a year ago.
“We believe AI is a really important investment area for Apple, and we’re going to be doing that incrementally on top of what we normally invest in our product roadmap,” said Apple CFO Kevan Parekh during Apple’s latest fiscal call. (AI isn’t Apple’s only spending target, either.)
While the billions Apple is investing are dwarfed by the huge infrastructure investments made by pure AI players, Apple’s infrastructure already exists — in the form
Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it misled consumers about the AI capabilities of the iPhone 15 and 16. The complaint claimed Apple exaggerated the readiness and functionality of Apple Intelligence features, particularly an upgraded Siri, influencing purchase decisions with capabilities that were incomplete or delayed. Without […]
Partnership between top startup DeepL and Amazon comes amid concern about Silicon Valley’s monopoly over digital infrastructure
AI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm.
While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use.
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The mishaps around Apple Intelligence have gone beyond denting Apple’s reputation – they have also cost the company $250 million in damages over smarter Siri delays.
Think back to the original introduction of Apple Intelligence and you might recall a promotional video that explained how a new and smarter Siri would act as your contextually-smart AI companion, helping you get things done. Almost two years later, that smarter Siri still hasn’t shipped — and while Apple has made major changes in management, AI strategy, and approach, this contextual companion isn’t now expected until later this year.
Hopefully.
Apple Intelligence can be seen as a Maps-launch style debacle on the part of the company. (Apple even had to deny that the video presentation for those features shown at WWDC 2024 (no longer officially available) was made up.)
Apple Intelligence’s $250M punishment
The entire affair left some iPhone users unhappy, so they launched a class action lawsuit against the company for dela
Microsoft, Google DeepMind and Elon Musk’s xAI have offered to let the U.S. government access new AI models ahead of their general release, which sets up a new phase in Silicon Valley’s often fractious relationship with the US government’s fear of AI threats, based on the latest report of AI companies offering models to U.S. officials in the name of security review, in the hopes that government analysts can vet frontier AI systems for security threats like cyberattacks and military use before it is exposed for public consumption by developers and users, and, inevitably, those who should have no business […]
