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Apple CEO Tim Cook pushed back a bit at the notion that the company was behind in AI on yesterday\u2019s Q4 earnings call with investors, as he highlighted technology developments that Apple had made recently that \u201cwould not be possible without AI.\u201d Specifically, the exec pointed to new iOS 17 features like Personal Voice and Live Voicemail as examples of its innovation with AI technologies. In addition, Cook confirmed Apple was working on generative AI technologies.<\/p>\n
The features Cook called out aren\u2019t necessarily thought of as AI by consumers, and that may be by design. Cook suggested that Apple doesn\u2019t label the features as \u201cAI\u201d necessarily.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe label them as to what their consumer benefit it,\u201d Cook said. \u201cBut the fundamental technology behind it is AI and machine learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Personal Voice, for example, is an accessibility feature<\/a> designed to create an automated voice that sounds like you. It\u2019s intended for people who are losing their speaking ability due to various health conditions, including ALS. To use the feature, people first spend 15 minutes reading text prompts into the device\u2019s microphone. Then, using machine learning technologies, the audio is processed locally on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac to create their own Personal Voice that sounds like them.<\/p>\n Live Voicemail, meanwhile, is a new consumer-facing feature in iOS 17<\/a> that displays a live transcription of a voicemail as it\u2019s being recorded in real time.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is at the heart of these features,\u201d Cook told investors. \u201cAnd then, you can go all the way to the lifesaving features on the watch and the phone like fall detection, crash detection, ECG on the watch. These would not be possible without AI,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n The Apple exec also confirmed that the company was developing generative AI technologies, saying \u201cobviously, we have work going on.\u201d But he declined to share details, noting that Apple doesn\u2019t really do that.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you can bet that we\u2019re investing, we\u2019re investing quite a bit, we\u2019re going to do it responsibly and it will \u2014 you will see product advancements over time that where those technologies are at the heart of them,\u201d Cook added.<\/p>\n Apple, however, seems to have some catching up to do in terms of consumer-facing AI technologies, which have gained attention in recent months thanks to launches of tools like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT and others from companies like Anthropic and Google.<\/p>\n The company has been said to be expanding its budget for building AI to \u201cmillions of dollars a day,\u201d according to The Information<\/a>, and is employing multiple teams working on LLMs (large language models) as it attempts to put the tech to use. The hope is that one day users would be able to automate tasks via Siri, which today have to be manually programmed, for example via the Shortcuts app. In addition, Siri could gain new AI skills, like being told to turn the last few photos a user has taken on their iPhone and text it to a friend, the report said.<\/p>\n Bloomberg also noted the next version of iOS will include more AI capabilities, including changes to Siri and the Messages app, in terms of answering questions and completing sentences \u2014 similar to Google\u2019s autocomplete for Gmail.<\/a> The outlet also suggested generative AI would come to Apple development tools, like Xcode.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n