Apple Hires AI Team From Init.ai to Join Work on Siri
Apple this week "acqui-hired" the team from Init.ai, a startup that designed a smart assistant to allow customer service representatives to easily parse through and automate some interactions with users, reports TechCrunch.
The startup focused on creating an AI with natural language processing and machine learning to analyze chat-based conversations between humans.
Init.ai announced that it was shutting down its service earlier this week to join a new project.
Today is an exciting day for our team. Init.ai is joining a project that touches the lives of countless people across the world. We are thrilled and excited at the new opportunities this brings us.
However, this means Init.ai will discontinue its service effective December 16th 2017. While we wish to make this transition as smooth as possible, we cannot continue to operate Init.ai going forward.
Apple did not purchase Init.ai and will not obtain any intellectual property nor is there an indication that Apple plans to use any existing Init.ai services. Instead, Apple has taken on the Init.ai team, who will now work on Apple's Siri personal assistant.
The addition of the Init.ai team may hint at Apple's future Siri plans, with the company perhaps planning to build out more business integrations to supplement Business Chat, the iOS 11 iMessage feature that allows businesses to communicate with customers.
TechCrunch says it's not entirely clear how many people from Init.ai will be transitioning to Apple, but the startup only employed six people.
Popular Stories
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well.
...
We're officially in the month of Black Friday, which will take place on Friday, November 29 in 2024. As always, this will be the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment,...
The first Geekbench 6 benchmark results for the M4 Pro chip surfaced today. Impressively, the results that are available so far show that the highest-end M4 Pro chip is faster than the highest-end M2 Ultra chip in terms of peak multi-core CPU performance.
Here is a comparison of the results:
Mac mini with M4 Pro (14-core CPU): 22,094 multi-core score (average of 11 results)
Mac Studio...
The iPhone SE 4 that's set to come out early next year is expected to debut Apple's first in-house 5G modem, according to Jeff Pu, an analyst who covers companies within Apple's supply chain.
In a research note this week with Hong Kong-based investment firm Haitong International Securities, Pu said Apple is expected to roll out its custom-made 5G modem starting with the next-generation...
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan.
The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
Apple's new M4 Pro and M4 Max chips are impressively fast in terms of CPU performance, topping the M2 Ultra, but what about graphics performance?
The first Geekbench 6 results for GPU performance are now available for the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and the Metal scores reveal some impressive year-over-year gains. Based on the Metal scores that are available so far, the M4 Pro and M4 Max are up to...
After a busy October in which Apple announced new Macs and Apple Intelligence launched, the calendar has now turned to November. Below, we outline what to expect from Apple this month as the slower-but-still-busy holiday season approaches.
After seeding the first betas of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 with additional Apple Intelligence features last month, Apple will likely...
