Neural AI: APPLE'S ECOSYSTEM ON THE VERGE OF EMBRACING GENERATIVE ASSISTANCE

While Apple may be keen to avoid “artificial intelligence” in its marketing materials, there’s no denying the company’s pursuits in machine learning are driving its technology in new directions.

Rumors are now rife that AI will play a significant role in iOS 18, scheduled to release in 2024, so let’s look at Apple’s AI efforts and speculate on what could come next.

SIRI IMPROVEMENTS ARE COMING

Introduced to the world as a voice assistant, Siri has grown to be much more than that. Siri Intelligence now influences everything from calendar scheduling to app suggestions by serving as a catch-all term for various machine learning algorithms. Siri is on the precipice of becoming the real personal assistant we’ve all been yearning for, and with a revolution in AI at Apple, Siri is poised to be the fulcrum of the Apple ecosystem. But it’s not without critique - earlier this year, a former Apple engineer spoke about the smart assistant and explained why it still lags behind its competition, namely Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. John Burkey, who Apple hired back in 2014 to work on its voice assistant, said: “Seemingly simple updates, like adding some new phrases to the data set, would require rebuilding the entire database, which could take up to six weeks. Adding more complex features like new search tools could take nearly a year.” Now, it seems Apple is ready to upgrade Siri for the future.