13 ms·

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

135 points by mikhael 3y ago

artninja1988 3y ago
Very interested in what they're going to bring to the table. When is iOS expected to drop?
- bengale 3y ago
  Should get betas in June at WWDC. Release is normally September when iPhones release.
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    Never. Apple has been using the public as their QA team for last many releases. So if I were you, I'd stay away from anything beta of Apple.
    - willio58 3y ago
      > Apple has been using the public as their QA team for last many releases. Are you referring to the Apple Beta Software Program? Would you rather them _not_ allow people to test their beta software so more bugs make it into the public release?
    - evilduck 3y ago
      People were clamoring for early access to betas and buying seats on developer accounts just to get it. Their public beta program just endorsed it and also allowed them to send actual developer betas to developers ahead of the public betas.
    - bengale 3y ago
      I'm not recommending it; they just asked when it would be available. It's worth noting that beta tests are there to catch these bugs, it's literally the point.
- goldenManatee 3y ago
  Wouldn’t they need several months (at least) to do integrations and testing?
doctorpangloss 3y ago
I have low hopes for Apple AI to be relevant, and if it's forced to be relevant, it won't be good. Apple is going to force people to use its crappy AI models for some BS reason. Some bullshit about privacy or whatever. It's so dumb, it will spell the end of their dominance of the device category in the US. The models have an extremely standardized, fungible interface, and Apple's not going to let OpenAI or whoever plug into their first party Siri or Messages or whatever text, vision and audio interfaces. It will be the most anti-consumer position to take, because it will prevent users from choosing the best models, not just the "most private" or "most X" or whatever aesthetic or subjective concerns users may have, and it will only take a while to impact consumers because Google is really shitty too. When was the last time it made sense to pay attention to an iOS platform technology? Developers have chosen, for the most part, to make the specific platform concerns someone else's problem. Maybe not since the Retina display has anything they have done really mattered to me specifically. I have "just" ignored Swift completely. MPS is cool and Apple Silicon is cool but it's not my problem, it's "just" yet another backend to the thing I actually want to use, like Torch or whatever. Same thing with Siri. Mobile Safari is perpetually deeply behind. Mobile Safari on iOS doesn't have WebXR, and they're aspiring to be an XR company. I ignored the Watch, and I'm pretty much ignoring the Apple Vision Pro, except for supporting it as a Unity target. In fact, even on the AVP and iPhone, all the innovation seemingly is being done in Unity, and maybe only because Epic is beefing with them. I get that people write applications in Swift or whatever. But I don't think it necessarily makes any sense to do that. Just because something happens, doesn't mean it makes sense. Apple doesn't give you access to any of the first party APIs, which is what developers actually want. The AI thing will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. In fact, what piece of software of theirs do you like to use that you aren't basically forced to? Like if the private APIs Photos or Messages used were open to any third party app, well of course we'd all be using third party apps to save our camera photos and send messages with compatibility with people too low tech to use an App Store. Or maybe they would use alternatives.
- filoleg 3y ago
  > It doesn't have WebXR This is just factually wrong, it has WebXR, I tested it myself on AVP recently. You just gotta enable a toggle in Safari settings once, and then you are able to consume any WebXR content just fine.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Has the AVP hype already worn off and time to move on to the next big thing?
paxys 3y ago
Meanwhile I am still waiting for Siri to reach the capability of an average voice assistant from ~2014.
- unstatusthequo 3y ago
  Siri excels at setting a hot dog done timer with my voice. That’s good, right?
  - resource0x 3y ago
    And you want it to do what? Fill out your taxes? This is a one-trick pony by design. :-)
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Tell me your secrets. I’ll practice it in your voice, your language, whatever. I get a time about half the time, and then if I immediately ask how much left on the timer, Siri informs me there are no timers. Which then promptly goes off.
    - camjohnson26 3y ago
      I set timers for 49 minutes frequently because Siri will hear 15 instead of 50
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Reminds me of hitting 99 seconds on the microwave because it’s easier to enter than 1 minute 30.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        One of the more obnoxious "features " of English.
        whycome 3y ago
        We should have big numbers like the French do. "60-10" (70) or "4-20" (80)
lvl102 3y ago
After Vision Pro, and recent news on auto, I am starting to wonder if Apple is too old to make anything good. They’re so behind in AI and they refuse to make key acquisitions. This corporate culture cuts both ways.
- anshumankmr 3y ago
  Aren’t they running some GPT2 version in iPhone 15. The also stopped this car thing and decided to move all the AI researches from the Apple car into implementing something for AI on AI for Apple devices Not saying that’s cutting edge but there is more to the AI division than meets the eye.
  - evilduck 3y ago
    They didn't specify exactly, but iOS 17's keyboard features mention transformers by name under Keyboard improvements: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-17/pdf/iOS_All_New_Features.pdf https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-17/pdf/iOS_All_New_Features.pd...
- zitterbewegung 3y ago
  Auto got pivoted to this project. The new keyboard uses a transformers architecture and I feel that the keyboard is much more accurate than before.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    Also, there was a ton of overlap from day 1. Battery tech, attention monitoring, LIDAR, object recognition, hands-free UX research, etc. Basically the only tech with no overlap is the ultra-dense screens and accompanying lenses.
  - anon373839 3y ago
    Oh man, I hate the new swipe keyboard! It tries too hard to select the next word the language model thinks is likely, and seems to disregard the actual swipes to get there. That aside, Apple has been doing a lot of AI for quite a while now, and executing most of it very well.
weinberg 3y ago
Kinda interesting that the open source core of macOS is called Darwin https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da... And now…they snagged DarwinAI.
- Ecsta 3y ago
  Maybe they just bought the company so they could use the name without being sued
jerpint 3y ago
The core professors involved in that startup are pioneers in shrinking model sizes while maintaining performance, they may have bought them out for that kind of ability
ddmma 3y ago
So one review of your app, in the App store, can lead to acquisition of your startup. That is when you own a marketplace and have competitive advantage.
jerojero 3y ago
I feel like Apple is in kind of a different position to the rest of the big tech people and so they can't take generative AI so "lightly". Let me explain. Millions of users use the iPhone. So many more than any hardware that Google might have. But here's the other caveat, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all have their own huge cloud infrastructure while Apple doesn't. This means if Apple were to make a push for generative AI like the rest of the companies are doing it would cost them a lot. Everyone with an iPhone will want to try it, it would be a huge launch. So... what's the answer to this? Well, it's pretty obvious. Ship small and efficient models that might have much more limited capabilities but still might be good enough particularly if they're well integrated with the rest of the software. Basically make Siri much smarter and capable. It's kind of what Google has started to do as well with their 8 pro. There's a couple features that run entirely on-device. It's pretty exciting if Apple manages to get something that feels good running on device; that's the kind of machine learning i'm excited about.
- Tagbert 3y ago
  Apple will probably do a hybrid between local and server processing. They will definitely do local where possible but some processing will still need to be done on servers. Apple just signed a deal with Super Micro for a large number of servers. i don’t expect Apple to focus on a clone of ChatGPT or Gemini. They are more likely to use it for photo operations, control of Siri, and to make each of their apps and features work better together.
- prepend 3y ago
  Apple has a massive cloud, but they don’t sell it or really want to sell it. I think they’ll want local because it fits into their profit margins and pushes higher end hardware. Imagine really having a reason to buy an iPhone18Pro or whatever. And I think llms will be able to scale digitally if they are compact enough to run locally (ie, Apple pays for development once, deploys it and then all operational costs are on the client). This is really different from openAI, and other cloud LLMs, where each user has a marginal cost to operate so requires a monthly recurring cost.
  - nujabe 3y ago
djmips 3y ago
DarwinAI was started in 2017 by Waterloo professors and alumni and the company "focuses on improving the efficiency of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) production for the electronics manufacturing industry with its visual quality inspection platform powered by artificial intelligence." https://uwaterloo.ca/systems-design-engineering/news/alumni-led-startup-darwinai-secures-81m-funding https://uwaterloo.ca/systems-design-engineering/news/alumni-...
devinprater 3y ago
Yay! Hopefully that means I can tell Siri to list my Audible books, then tell it to play one. No need to deal with Audible's amazingly sluggish UI with VoiceOver. More seriously, I can't wait to see what the accessibility folks can do with gen AI. They were the first to use image classification AI to describe images, and they're super great at it!
- joshstrange 3y ago
  It's not for everyone but I've never been happier with OpenAudible [0] + Plex [1] + Prologue [2] [0] https://openaudible.org/ https://openaudible.org/ [1] https://plex.tv/ https://plex.tv/ [2] https://prologue.audio/ https://prologue.audio/

135 points by mikhael 3y ago

artninja1988 3y ago

Very interested in what they're going to bring to the table. When is iOS expected to drop?

bengale 3y ago
Should get betas in June at WWDC. Release is normally September when iPhones release.
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  Never. Apple has been using the public as their QA team for last many releases. So if I were you, I'd stay away from anything beta of Apple.
  - willio58 3y ago
    > Apple has been using the public as their QA team for last many releases. Are you referring to the Apple Beta Software Program? Would you rather them _not_ allow people to test their beta software so more bugs make it into the public release?
  - evilduck 3y ago
    People were clamoring for early access to betas and buying seats on developer accounts just to get it. Their public beta program just endorsed it and also allowed them to send actual developer betas to developers ahead of the public betas.
  - bengale 3y ago
    I'm not recommending it; they just asked when it would be available. It's worth noting that beta tests are there to catch these bugs, it's literally the point.
goldenManatee 3y ago
Wouldn’t they need several months (at least) to do integrations and testing?

doctorpangloss 3y ago

I have low hopes for Apple AI to be relevant, and if it's forced to be relevant, it won't be good. Apple is going to force people to use its crappy AI models for some BS reason. Some bullshit about privacy or whatever. It's so dumb, it will spell the end of their dominance of the device category in the US. The models have an extremely standardized, fungible interface, and Apple's not going to let OpenAI or whoever plug into their first party Siri or Messages or whatever text, vision and audio interfaces. It will be the most anti-consumer position to take, because it will prevent users from choosing the best models, not just the "most private" or "most X" or whatever aesthetic or subjective concerns users may have, and it will only take a while to impact consumers because Google is really shitty too. When was the last time it made sense to pay attention to an iOS platform technology? Developers have chosen, for the most part, to make the specific platform concerns someone else's problem. Maybe not since the Retina display has anything they have done really mattered to me specifically. I have "just" ignored Swift completely. MPS is cool and Apple Silicon is cool but it's not my problem, it's "just" yet another backend to the thing I actually want to use, like Torch or whatever. Same thing with Siri. Mobile Safari is perpetually deeply behind. Mobile Safari on iOS doesn't have WebXR, and they're aspiring to be an XR company. I ignored the Watch, and I'm pretty much ignoring the Apple Vision Pro, except for supporting it as a Unity target. In fact, even on the AVP and iPhone, all the innovation seemingly is being done in Unity, and maybe only because Epic is beefing with them. I get that people write applications in Swift or whatever. But I don't think it necessarily makes any sense to do that. Just because something happens, doesn't mean it makes sense. Apple doesn't give you access to any of the first party APIs, which is what developers actually want. The AI thing will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. In fact, what piece of software of theirs do you like to use that you aren't basically forced to? Like if the private APIs Photos or Messages used were open to any third party app, well of course we'd all be using third party apps to save our camera photos and send messages with compatibility with people too low tech to use an App Store. Or maybe they would use alternatives.

filoleg 3y ago
> It doesn't have WebXR This is just factually wrong, it has WebXR, I tested it myself on AVP recently. You just gotta enable a toggle in Safari settings once, and then you are able to consume any WebXR content just fine.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Has the AVP hype already worn off and time to move on to the next big thing?

paxys 3y ago

Meanwhile I am still waiting for Siri to reach the capability of an average voice assistant from ~2014.

unstatusthequo 3y ago
Siri excels at setting a hot dog done timer with my voice. That’s good, right?
- resource0x 3y ago
  And you want it to do what? Fill out your taxes? This is a one-trick pony by design. :-)
- bombcar 3y ago
  Tell me your secrets. I’ll practice it in your voice, your language, whatever. I get a time about half the time, and then if I immediately ask how much left on the timer, Siri informs me there are no timers. Which then promptly goes off.
  - camjohnson26 3y ago
    I set timers for 49 minutes frequently because Siri will hear 15 instead of 50
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Reminds me of hitting 99 seconds on the microwave because it’s easier to enter than 1 minute 30.
    - euroderf 3y ago
      One of the more obnoxious "features " of English.
      - whycome 3y ago
        We should have big numbers like the French do. "60-10" (70) or "4-20" (80)

lvl102 3y ago

After Vision Pro, and recent news on auto, I am starting to wonder if Apple is too old to make anything good. They’re so behind in AI and they refuse to make key acquisitions. This corporate culture cuts both ways.

anshumankmr 3y ago
Aren’t they running some GPT2 version in iPhone 15. The also stopped this car thing and decided to move all the AI researches from the Apple car into implementing something for AI on AI for Apple devices Not saying that’s cutting edge but there is more to the AI division than meets the eye.
- evilduck 3y ago
  They didn't specify exactly, but iOS 17's keyboard features mention transformers by name under Keyboard improvements: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-17/pdf/iOS_All_New_Features.pdf https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-17/pdf/iOS_All_New_Features.pd...
zitterbewegung 3y ago
Auto got pivoted to this project. The new keyboard uses a transformers architecture and I feel that the keyboard is much more accurate than before.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Also, there was a ton of overlap from day 1. Battery tech, attention monitoring, LIDAR, object recognition, hands-free UX research, etc. Basically the only tech with no overlap is the ultra-dense screens and accompanying lenses.
- anon373839 3y ago
  Oh man, I hate the new swipe keyboard! It tries too hard to select the next word the language model thinks is likely, and seems to disregard the actual swipes to get there. That aside, Apple has been doing a lot of AI for quite a while now, and executing most of it very well.

weinberg 3y ago

Kinda interesting that the open source core of macOS is called Darwin https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da... And now…they snagged DarwinAI.

Ecsta 3y ago
Maybe they just bought the company so they could use the name without being sued

jerpint 3y ago

The core professors involved in that startup are pioneers in shrinking model sizes while maintaining performance, they may have bought them out for that kind of ability

ddmma 3y ago

So one review of your app, in the App store, can lead to acquisition of your startup. That is when you own a marketplace and have competitive advantage.

jerojero 3y ago

I feel like Apple is in kind of a different position to the rest of the big tech people and so they can't take generative AI so "lightly". Let me explain. Millions of users use the iPhone. So many more than any hardware that Google might have. But here's the other caveat, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all have their own huge cloud infrastructure while Apple doesn't. This means if Apple were to make a push for generative AI like the rest of the companies are doing it would cost them a lot. Everyone with an iPhone will want to try it, it would be a huge launch. So... what's the answer to this? Well, it's pretty obvious. Ship small and efficient models that might have much more limited capabilities but still might be good enough particularly if they're well integrated with the rest of the software. Basically make Siri much smarter and capable. It's kind of what Google has started to do as well with their 8 pro. There's a couple features that run entirely on-device. It's pretty exciting if Apple manages to get something that feels good running on device; that's the kind of machine learning i'm excited about.

Tagbert 3y ago
Apple will probably do a hybrid between local and server processing. They will definitely do local where possible but some processing will still need to be done on servers. Apple just signed a deal with Super Micro for a large number of servers. i don’t expect Apple to focus on a clone of ChatGPT or Gemini. They are more likely to use it for photo operations, control of Siri, and to make each of their apps and features work better together.
prepend 3y ago
Apple has a massive cloud, but they don’t sell it or really want to sell it. I think they’ll want local because it fits into their profit margins and pushes higher end hardware. Imagine really having a reason to buy an iPhone18Pro or whatever. And I think llms will be able to scale digitally if they are compact enough to run locally (ie, Apple pays for development once, deploys it and then all operational costs are on the client). This is really different from openAI, and other cloud LLMs, where each user has a marginal cost to operate so requires a monthly recurring cost.
- nujabe 3y ago

djmips 3y ago

DarwinAI was started in 2017 by Waterloo professors and alumni and the company "focuses on improving the efficiency of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) production for the electronics manufacturing industry with its visual quality inspection platform powered by artificial intelligence." https://uwaterloo.ca/systems-design-engineering/news/alumni-led-startup-darwinai-secures-81m-funding https://uwaterloo.ca/systems-design-engineering/news/alumni-...

devinprater 3y ago

Yay! Hopefully that means I can tell Siri to list my Audible books, then tell it to play one. No need to deal with Audible's amazingly sluggish UI with VoiceOver. More seriously, I can't wait to see what the accessibility folks can do with gen AI. They were the first to use image classification AI to describe images, and they're super great at it!

joshstrange 3y ago
It's not for everyone but I've never been happier with OpenAudible [0] + Plex [1] + Prologue [2] [0] https://openaudible.org/ https://openaudible.org/ [1] https://plex.tv/ https://plex.tv/ [2] https://prologue.audio/ https://prologue.audio/