Apple Has AI Plans, Without the Marketing Noise

Billions of dollars have been tossed on the generative AI gamble and the companies made sure the numbers were big enough to make it to media publications across the globe. Besides keeping an eye on AI developments, newsrooms have become a bigger part of the AI industry. 

Tech companies like OpenAI, Google and even Apple developing these AI models are rushing to ink deals with the press moguls to exclusively access copyrighted information for their language models with insatiable appetite.

Lately, the ChatGPT maker, OpenAI has been in the news for pairing up with Axel Springer, the parent company of Politico and Business Insider. The Information has also reported that OpenAI offers between $1 million and $5 million a year to license copyrighted news articles to train its AI models. That’s one of the first indications of how much AI companies are willing to pay for licensed content.

Meanwhile, in the Cupertino orchards, Apple is also shaking the trees in search of media collaborators, dangling at least $50 million over a multiyear period for the privilege of accessing data. The list reads like a who's who of media royalty, with Condé Nast, publishers of Vogue and The New Yorker, receiving the Cupertino call. NBC News is another news house approached along with IAC, the owner of People, The Daily Beast, and Better Homes and Gardens. 

Apple’s No Noise AI

The negotiations between Apple and news publishers might seem like an early attempt to catch up in generative AI, which allows machines to work and talk like humans. But one can disagree as the iPhone maker is not relying on AI as a marketing jingle. The trillion dollar company has been silently working on its AI capabilities which has not been in the media limelight as much as the rest. 

Moreover, secrecy is like a religion at Apple. It's baked deeply into the DNA and culture of the company. It has been notoriously popular for being tight-lipped about new product announcements and launches.

For instance, in October 2023, Apple and Columbia University collaboratively released an open-source multimodal language model called Ferret. Initially the paper received little attention but the chatter increased a few weeks later due to the community’s interest in the potential for local LLMs to power small devices. 

The  Cupertino-based company also introduced two new research papers with new techniques for 3-D avatars and efficient language model inference, potentially enabling more immersive visual experiences and allowing complex AI systems to run on consumer devices like iPhones and iPads.

First, the research team introduced HUGS, (Human Gaussian Splats) a tool to turn videos taken from a single camera into 3D avatars. In the second paper, they figured out a way to use large language models, like GPT-4, on regular devices without using too much memory. 

Existing Capabilities

The unexpected news of Apple entering open source and local ML developments comes at the time of companies focusing on their hardware capabilities. The GPT-designer, OpenAI, is likely working on a smartphone designed by famed iPhone-designer Jony Ive.

Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri which has remained largely stagnant since its release, can be next expected to be rebuilt with generative AI given its existing capabilities. Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, has said Apple’s work related to AI is “going on” but has not elaborated anything else publicly.

As Apple is busy cozying up to media houses, they're keeping it hush-hush about how exactly they plan to bring generative AI in the news industry. Apple has got a substantial news-loving crowd glued to their devices. Some news executives are hopeful, thinking Apple's move might turn into a real-deal partnership. A couple of insiders are also feeling upbeat about the long-term potential of the deal.