Apple has hired dozens of top AI experts from Google and has set up a "secret European lab" in Zurich .
The new space hosts a team of selected professionals tasked with developing innovative artificial intelligence models and products, according to a report by the Financial Times.
According to a detailed analysis of LinkedIn profiles conducted by the Financial Times, Apple has brought on board at least 36 experts from Google since 2018, following its decision to appoint John Giannandrea as its top AI spokesperson.
See more: Apple & Google likely to collaborate to create artificial intelligence on iPhones
Apple’s top AI team, based in California and Seattle, is expanding its reach with the recent expansion of its AI-focused offices in Zurich, Switzerland. Apple’s impressive acquisition of local AI startups FaceShift(virtual reality) and Fashwell (image recognition) has fueled the company to set up a dedicated and secretive research lab, known as the “Vision Lab,” in the city.
According to the recent report, employees at the lab actively contributed to Apple's research into the advanced technology behind ChatGPT and other related products based on large language models (LLMs). The research focused on developing more sophisticated AIs that incorporate textual and visual information, with the goal of producing intelligent answers to questions.
The report highlights that Apple's recent focus on LLMs is a logical continuation of its involvement with Siri over the past decade.
The company has long recognized the extraordinary potential of “neural networks” – an advanced form of artificial intelligence inspired by the structure and function of human neurons. This technology forms the basis for groundbreaking products like ChatGPT, fueling innovation.
Chuck Wooters, an AI and LLM expert who joined Apple in December 2013 and worked on Siri for nearly two years, revealed that during his tenure, one of the team's key goals was to transition Siri to a neural architecture for speech recognition. Even before the advent of advanced language models, the team had shown great interest and support for neural technologies.
Apple currently has a number of former Google executives on its top AI team, including Giannandrea, who previously headed Google’s Brain lab, which is now part of DeepMind. Samy Bengio, who is now Apple’s senior director of AI and ML research, also served as a top AI scientist at Google. Similarly, Ruoming Pang, who leads Apple’s “Foundation Models” team focused on advanced language models, was the head of AI speech recognition research at Google.
In 2016, Apple acquired Perceptual Machines, a company that developed artificial intelligence-based image recognition systems, founded by Ruslan Salakhutdinov, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Salakhutdinov is considered a leading researcher in the field of neural networks, having studied at the University of Toronto under the guidance of Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather” of artificial intelligence, who left Google the previous year, expressing concerns about the risks posed by the development of artificial intelligence.
Salakhutdinov told the Financial Times that Apple’s delayed AI development is due to the language models’ tendency to give incorrect or problematic answers. “I think they’re being more cautious because they don’t want to release something they can’t fully control,” he said.
Read more: Apple: Invests in artificial intelligence more than other companies
iOS 18 is expected to bring groundbreaking AI capabilities to Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, Apple Music, Messages, Health, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, and more. It appears that these features will be powered by Apple's LLM on the device, with Apple also looking into potential partnerships with Google, OpenAI , and Baidu.
Source: macrumors
