Apple bets big on AI investment, focuses on increasing generative AI talent
The iPhone manufacturer listed dozens of AI jobs in the past few months in China, France, and the US in an effort to recruit positions that could contribute to the development of generative AI technologies.
Highlights
- Apple's job listings have revealed the possible paths for using generative AI in its devices
- The tech giant has been working on generative AI and similar models for years
As per the recent report from Financial Times, Apple has spent $22.61 billion on research and development, or about $3.12 billion more than the previous two years combined on various developments including that of generative AI.
While it hasn’t drifted far from its objective of incorporating its own AI chatbot into Apple devices in the future, it’s not looking to hire more talent in the generative AI space to accelerate the company’s progress in the field of AI.
The iPhone manufacturer has advertised hundreds of AI jobs in China, France, and the US in recent months in an effort to find candidates for positions that might contribute to the development of generative AI tools that utilise local processing on mobile devices.
Apple’s strong bet on AI growth
"We are seeking a candidate with a proven track record in applied ML research. Responsibilities in the role will include training large-scale language and multimodal models on distributed backends, deployment of compact neural architectures such as transformers efficiently on the device, and learning policies that can be personalised to the user in a privacy-preserving manner," read one such posting.
In fact, the potential directions for generative AI use in Apple's products have been highlighted through job listings.
In the wake of several AI developments, the CEO of the company, Tim Cook, has also revealed that Apple has been working on generative AI and similar models for years.
Apple sales increase amid AI innovations
Recently, the company unveiled the June 2023 quarter results, which were boosted by improved services sales that increased 8 percent from the same period a year earlier.
"On a research basis, we've been doing research on AI and machine learning, including generative AI, for years," said Cook.
Apple rarely discusses generative AI, and its quarterly report mostly avoided mentioning the technology that has captured the attention of the globe. To note, the tech giant has reached 1 billion paid subscriptions across all of the services on its platform, up 150 million over the past year and nearly twice as many as it had just three years prior.
While Apple is infamously known to be ‘late to the party’ every time it launches something innovative, it surely doesn’t not want to be the last when it comes to AI technologies.
