Apple Buys DarwinAI Ahead of Major Generative AI Updates Coming in iOS 18

[turbineseaplane]

It seems apple spent too much resources on the “meta verse“ hype with the vision pro.

It's hard to keep up with the "hypes"

They never even get anywhere with any given "hype" before it's time to start with the next "hype"

Tech is really in a bad place these days
The snake is eating its own tail trying to find "something .... anything..."

We need engineers to start building things for actual people again, and not to just chase an acquisition and/or VC money for a "pop & exit"

Things need to start back at the ground level once again, as these large companies seem to have lost the ability to do anything but chase shareholder returns.

 

[fatTribble]

I'm curious, what do you do for a living? Are you knowledgeable enough to do every job available at the company you work for?

It’s a common belief. My employer thought all of the software engineers could move between vastly different projects with ease.

 

[outlawarth]

Hopefully the new Siri/AI is more useful than just explaining what water falling from the sky is:

 

[goobot]

I highly doubt a purchase made today will make its way into iOS 18

 

[turbineseaplane]

I highly doubt a purchase made today will make its way into iOS 18

Especially since iOS version "Z" is usually just comprised of features they held back from previous versions "X" and "Y"

Innovation now happens on marketing schedules to make sure they have something "new" to please Wall Street

 

[TheDauterive]

you don't buy every company under the sun when you are playing from the front. It's a catch up move from a big company normally.

I worry that Apple spent the last 5 to 10 years focusing on things like Virtual Reality and the Apple Car, and the AI paradigm shift that happened with openAI took them largely by surprise. The fact that Apple tends to take twice as long to bring products to market ("We want to do it right!") as well as the fact that the last (admittedly rudimentary) AI they bought (Siri) they ended up ruining has me more worried still.

IMO, the best case scenario is that Apple partners with an AI company that already has a mature product and focuses on wiring that into HomeKit and iOS while they take their time developing their own AI from the companies they've bought.

AI is probably going to be the dominant information technology for the next twenty years and Apple will be at a disadvantage if they fail to have a competitive product in that space. Microsoft's involvement with OpenAI may mean there are no licensing opportunities available with ChatGPT, but how about licensing Claude? Any AI company looking to catch up with ChatGPT should jump at the chance to be on the world's best-selling smartphone, and Apple needs to get up to speed quickly, so it's in their best interest as well. Just like Google Maps on the first iPhone, Apple should have a strong 3rd-party product on its devices while they develop their clearly superior alternative, e.g. Apple Maps. (And if their clearly superior alternative turns out to be not so superior, all the more reason to have a strong 3rd party presence to fill the gap.)

 

[seek3r]

I still find it amazing that Apple, the world's most valuable company which hires the most brilliant engineers and strategists, missed the AI vector when it launched several years ago.

They need to catch up, which is already extremely hard considering their current position, and break new ground fast. Good luck!

In many ways they didnt, they’ve been cautious and a bit subtle in their use of what AI actually is at this point, mostly calling it Machine Learning alone. Things like the automatic learning that happens on your photos, or being able to select components out of photos, the predictive text algorithms, etc all fall under AI.

Where apple missed the boat tech-wise was improving Siri with a good LLM and generative responses, and that really has to do with how much of a cluster Siri has been since Apple bought it. It always used hand curated canned responses with poor voice recognition.

It really seems like they just didnt want to invest the money to wholesale replace Siri and figured they could increment their way to something better because all the other voice assistants were lackluster too and got caught flatfooted by chatgpt

But outside of Siri (which is big, dont get me wrong) Apple’s main problem with AI is that they didnt call it AI.

 

[rizzo41999]

Honestly, it’s not just Apple. A lot of sloppy “Generative AI” products are coming out from a lot of companies now. Most of which are built on ChatCPT’s protocol.

 

[gatorvet96]

i mean you don't really know she's not spying on you, that's just what apple says

You mean like this?

Confirmed: Apple Caught In Siri Privacy Scandal, Let Contractors Listen To Private Voice Recordings

Atherton Research's Principal Analyst and Futurist Jeb Su unpacks the ramifications of Apple letting outside contractors access private conversations of Siri users.

www.forbes.com

Those were to make Siri better, not intentionally to make direct money off of us by selling data to third parties so they could market to us. It is possible a few bad actors took that information for bad reasons, it wasn't the intent that Google, Meta, and Amazon do. 😂Although it hardly made her better LOL

 

[bradman83]

How about fixing HomePod Siri first then work on this stuff? The silly thing says "Sorry there is a problem with Apple Music" then in a second or so, it plays what I asked.

Wouldn't that imply that perhaps the core AI technology that powers Siri today is in desperate need of an overhaul, and that Siri might need to be rebuilt from the ground up? In theory smart generative AI features would enhance all of Siri.

 

[farmboy]

Your highness

Apple purchased a number of companies to develop their car. Did you already forget that Apple discontinued that project? They did not win. They lost.

I can't think of any companies that Apple purchased for their car project. They recruited executives and engineers from all over the industry. And they co-developed a cab-style vehicle with Volkswagen, licensed some autonomous software and had Lexus build a couple of vehicles for their on-the-road test beds. Just about everything else was contractual.

 

[bradman83]

Wow Darwin AI,
I can see why Apple purchased it considering their kernel uses something they created called Darwin.

Ironically Darwin is the part of macOS that Apple didn't do a whole lot to create; it's based on the core of NextStep/OPENSTEP (which Apple acquired) which is in turn based on FreeBSD and the Mach kernel. They've certainly modified and optimized Darwin, but the core of it they did not create. (Bit of trivia: Darwin is the name for the broader core Unix system underlying macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, visionOS, watchOS and homeOS, the kernel itself is called XNU).

 

[Mac_fan75]

In many ways they didnt, they’ve been cautious and a bit subtle in their use of what AI actually is at this point, mostly calling it Machine Learning alone. Things like the automatic learning that happens on your photos, or being able to select components out of photos, the predictive text algorithms, etc all fall under AI.

Where apple missed the boat tech-wise was improving Siri with a good LLM and generative responses, and that really has to do with how much of a cluster Siri has been since Apple bought it. It always used hand curated canned responses with poor voice recognition.

It really seems like they just didnt want to invest the money to wholesale replace Siri and figured they could increment their way to something better because all the other voice assistants were lackluster too and got caught flatfooted by chatgpt

But outside of Siri (which is big, dont get me wrong) Apple’s main problem with AI is that they didnt call it AI.

It is a good thing, because Machine learning was the correct phrase, people hyping with AI where it's really not.
Now they need to rename it because yeah hype train, Samsung Train everybody on it.

 

[Warfie]

Apple is so far behind from competition on this that it reminds me of Nokia. Apple car, Vision Pro, squeezing juice from customers seems to be the real focus of the company today.

 

[Beautyspin]

Those were to make Siri better, not intentionally to make direct money off of us by selling data to third parties so they could market to us. It is possible a few bad actors took that information for bad reasons, it wasn't the intent that Google, Meta, and Amazon do. 😂Although it hardly made her better LOL

No advertising company sells data. It monetizes the data by using RTB (Real Time Bidding). Every Ad company has an equivalent and if they are not having, it is not because they are pious, but because they are inept. Apple did not have it but now they are planning to have one too. So, why did they take so much time?

Apple Reportedly Testing AI-Powered Ad Technology

Apple has begun testing a new AI-powered tool with a small group of advertisers that automatically decides where to place ads on the App Store,...

www.macrumors.com

 

[neuropsychguy]

I still remember people on this forum would be attacked for criticism of Siri.

Siri failed over a decade ago.

Anything will be better than what it is today.

ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!

I use Siri and Alexa devices. Siri still does better than Alexa. Maybe that's not saying much, but Siri does quite well for me when texting, calling, taking notes, playing Apple Music, creating reminders, getting directions, and more.

 

[karranz]

Clearly Steve didn’t have enough time to predict the future of assistants powered by AIs and Apple’s nowadays executives are nowhere near him. #applecar #visionpro

 

[dannyyankou]

And finally, Darwin runs on the cloud, not on-device, right?. Why will it require iphone 16 to use it?.
Dead before birth.

Maybe Apple will shift it to on device processing? You know cloud based just means it runs on a server, which is a fancy word for a computer connected to the internet.

 

[wilhoitm]

Clearly Steve didn’t have enough time to predict the future of assistants powered by AIs and Apple’s nowadays executives are nowhere near him.

Yes Steve did! This is from way back in 1987. It just took 37 years to become a reality!

 

[newyorksole]

How about fixing HomePod Siri first then work on this stuff? The silly thing says "Sorry there is a problem with Apple Music" then in a second or so, it plays what I asked.

bruh it’s BAD. so bad.

some days Siri x HomePod are flawless, but lately and MAJORITY of the time— absolutle crap.

it’s like embarrassingly bad. my WiFi connection is strong. apartment isn’t huge and Siri just butchers so many things.

I’m praying that these issues get fixed because I’m just about ready to use Apple Music on a different speaker.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

How about fixing HomePod Siri first then work on this stuff? The silly thing says "Sorry there is a problem with Apple Music" then in a second or so, it plays what I asked.

AI to improve manufacturing and scaling down product components is far more important than your request.

 

[karranz]

Yes Steve did! This is from way back in 1987. It just took 37 years to become a reality!

That's an amazing video!. Now I’m 101% sure he would have evolved Siri in ways humanity can only dream of.

 

[Kierkegaarden]

“Catch up to Microsoft, Google, and others”? In what way is Apple behind? What new source of revenue have these companies developed around AI? I see this as completely disrupting search ads, so I don’t see how Google benefits in that regard. And we don’t know how many are paying for Microsoft co-pilot subscriptions or will feel the need to continue with them.

The way I see it is the chip companies and data center builders are the biggest beneficiaries, and then cloud service providers — these are both markets Apple is not in. At some point, there will need to be a big return on investment — if it isn’t there, why would there be continuing investment? Because if you’re including additional functionality at no cost but requires massive infrastructure investment, wouldn’t this become a problem down the road?

 

[LV426]

How about fixing HomePod Siri first then work on this stuff? The silly thing says "Sorry there is a problem with Apple Music" then in a second or so, it plays what I asked.

I was about to give up my bedroom HomePod because the wife would often go into the bathroom with her AirPods listening to a podcast, and it would rudely hijack what I was listening to on the HomePod. Very very annoying. No setting I could make on her phone would stop it from hijacking my HomePod. But...

Solution! I removed it, created a new home called Bedroom, added the HomePod to that, and made it invisible to the rest of the family. No more hijacking!

 

[IllegitimateValor]

If Siri will answer me without suggesting a website I am all for it.

Yes! By now they should’ve at least let Siri open sites ad-hoc and disappear them when done. I don’t want to switch to the browser for every thing I have Siri look up. Just show me the web results! Open in system browser should be a next step option, not the default.

That this functionality has persisted so long is maddening