On February 28, at Apple's annual general meeting, CEO Cook said: "Later this year, I look forward to sharing with you how we will open up a new Xintiandi in generative AI. We believe this technology can redefine the future."
This is the strongest signal that Apple has released so far to embrace the wave of generative AI, causing industry shock. A day ago, Bloomberg revealed that the "Titan Plan", which carries Apple's ten-year car dream, is coming to an end. Some of the nearly 2000 employees of the project will switch to generative AI projects. This is also another strong proof of Apple's full push into the AI field.
At the shareholder meeting, Cook did not disclose a specific time when the company's AI progress would be announced, but industry speculation suggests that Apple may choose to announce it at the global developer conference held in June this year.
All along, when facing the booming wave of generative AI, Apple's actions have been few and its presence has been extremely low, like a "bystander". But in reality, Apple is not without ambition in the field of AI. The company has made multiple investments, including framework, hardware procurement, internal AI models, etc. Moreover, as of 2023, Apple has acquired over 30 AI startups.
But since the launch of ChatGPT, the field of generative AI has become a battleground for technology companies such as OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Even if the strategic focus is shifted to AI, how can Apple catch up with its competitors?
The Daily Economic News reporter noticed that in December 2023, Apple researchers published a research paper that may give a glimpse of Apple's AI strategy - embedding native AI models into existing devices.
Dan Ives, Managing Director of WedBush Securities in the United States, predicted in an email sent to reporters that "Apple will integrate generative AI into the iPhone 16, marking the beginning of a new growth area for Apple's golden user base."
Apple's AI Layout
At Apple's annual shareholder meeting, Cook did not disclose the progress of Apple's AI, but he stated that devices currently using Apple's AI technology include Vision Pro (hand tracking) and Apple Watch (heart rate alarm). He also stated that every Mac using Apple chips is an exceptionally powerful AI machine, and there is currently no computer on the market that is more suitable for AI than it.
However, the capital market has not shown much interest in Cook's inclination towards generative AI. On the day of the shareholder meeting, Apple's stock price closed down 0.89%.
In fact, although Apple has always appeared like an outsider in the generative AI competition to the outside world, it does not mean that it has achieved nothing.
A reporter from the Daily Economic News noticed that before issuing a clear signal of reinforcement, Apple had already made significant investments or research in the field of AI, including hardware procurement, internal AI model construction, and research on how to run AI on small devices.
As early as June 2017, Apple announced the CoreML framework. CoreML aims to deploy pre trained AI models to various applications on Apple devices. Foreign media believe that this was the initial path for Apple to passively participate in generative AI.
The launch of MLX, an open-source array framework specifically designed for machine learning on Apple chips, represents a shift in Apple's attitude from passive participation to active development. The MLX, released in December last year, was designed specifically for machine learning researchers to effectively train and deploy AI models. This to some extent indicates the company's ambition towards generative AI.
In terms of large-scale language models, Bloomberg revealed in July last year that Apple has established a framework for large-scale language models called "Ajax" and created chatbot services based on Ajax, which some engineers refer to as "Apple GPT". Last October, researchers from Apple and Cornell University jointly developed the multi-modal AI model Ferret.
In addition to building AI frameworks and basic models, it has been noted by journalists that Apple is collaborating with external partners to promote the open-source capabilities of generative AI. At the same time, Apple is also investing heavily in actively purchasing chips.
Renowned Apple analyst Guo Minggui stated that Apple has made significant investments in AI servers, purchasing 2000-3000 units in 2023. The company plans to purchase an additional 18000-2000 units in 2024, accounting for 5% of global AI server shipments. It is reported that Apple will spend at least $620 million on AI server procurement in 2023, and it is expected to reach $4.75 billion by 2024. The AI servers purchased by Apple are mainly the most common NVIDIA HGXH1008-GP.
On the other hand, Apple can be said to be "far ahead" in acquiring AI startups. According to reports, as of 2023, Apple has acquired up to 32 AI startups, ranking first among tech giants. According to the latest reports from foreign media, Apple plans to acquire German AI startup Brighter AI this year to establish a larger generative AI dataset.
Stocklytics financial analyst Edith Reads stated that by acquiring promising AI startups, Apple has gained top talent and core innovative technologies. Apple's investment strategy highlights its focus in the field of AI, including AI talent, key technologies, and intellectual property.
Last year, renowned technology journalist Mark Gurman revealed that Apple executives were caught off guard by the sudden AI boom in the industry and have been busy making up for lost time since the end of 2022. From the above layout, it can indeed be seen that Apple is intensifying its pursuit of its competitors. After falling behind for a period of time, Apple is no longer willing to be a bystander.
Apple's AI Path: Embedding AI into Existing Devices
Although Apple has already established a presence in the AI field, the current generative AI field is already surrounded by strong competitors. Leading-edge enterprise OpenAI goes without saying that ChatGPT first gained a strong presence in the tech industry, and then at the beginning of this year, it used Sora, a video technology from Wensheng, to aggressively boost its presence in the tech industry. Other tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are also increasing their investment in generative AI.
How does Apple plan to break through in such an environment?
The Daily Economic News reporter noticed that in December 2023, Apple researchers published a research paper on the preprint website called LLM in a flash: Efficient Large Language Model Inference with Limited Memory. The paper mentions that Apple has been committed to solving the challenge of running large generative AI models on devices with limited memory, and the research method involves using common flash memory in mobile devices instead of traditional RAM to store neural network AI models.
arxiv. org
From this paper, we may gain a glimpse into Apple's AI development path, which involves embedding native AI models into existing Apple devices.
Dan Ives, Managing Director of WedBush Securities in the United States, also predicted in an email sent to the Daily Economic News reporter that "Apple will integrate generative AI into the iPhone 16, which will mark the beginning of a new growth area for Apple's golden user base."
"Compared to other companies, Apple has a huge distribution advantage," said Ulrik Stig Hansen, President of Encord, a London based generative AI company. "Apple can bundle AI technology with iCloud services that already have hundreds of millions of users, which is a natural thing for them."
Based on this, foreign media Techopedia speculated on potential use cases where AI will be applied in the Apple ecosystem.
Techopedia believes that apart from some generated applications, Samsung's exploratory measures, and mobile access to AI tools such as ChatGPT, the market has not yet seen the takeoff of AI on mobile devices. Apple's focus is on integrating AI on daily devices, which could transform the company into an important presence in the competitive landscape of generative AI.
In addition to embedding native AI models into the iPhone, many technology media and industry insiders believe that the intelligent head display device Vision Pro also carries Apple's AI ambitions.
Dan Ives told the Daily Economic News, "The ultimate goal of Vision Pro is to collaborate with iPhones and other Apple devices in the coming years, and many consumer AI use cases will experience explosive growth in health, fitness, sports content, and autonomous fields. Vision Pro is Apple's first step into the AI field, and it is expected that Apple will first discuss establishing an independent AI app store this summer."
Coincidentally, in 2015, Apple launched the AR/VR project codenamed T288. This project is almost parallel to the electric vehicle project Titan Project, and unlike the latter, the T288 product was successfully launched this year, which is the Vision Pro.
Some comments suggest that after abandoning the automotive project, Apple is more optimistic about the future of XR (Extended Reality), and the emergence of Sora may become a tipping point for the XR industry. In terms of the XR ecosystem, Apple's technology and hardware products are already in place, and the development of cultural video technology may drive the XR industry to achieve breakthroughs in content.
For Apple's AI journey, Techopedia has high hopes, "This may remind people of Apple's past. It wasn't always the first to enter the market, but it always did top when it went public."
