Apparently, things are really being revamped in Apple’s Siri team.
On March 20, it was announced that Mike Rockwell, Apple’s head of the Technology Development Group who spearheaded the developer of the Apple Vision Pro, is taking over the Siri team following the “personalized Siri” fiasco/missing Apple Intelligence fiasco. He’ll report to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
And Federighi has told Siri engineers to do “whatever it takes to build the best AI features,” even if that means using open-source models from other companies in its software products as opposed to Apple’s own models, according to The Information (a subscription is required to read the article).
From the report: Federighi has already shaken things up. In a departure from previous policy, he has instructed Siri’s machine-learning engineers to do whatever it takes to build the best AI features, even if it means using open-source models from other companies in its software products as opposed to Apple’s own models, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Information adds that, until now, Apple engineers could only use third-party LLMs to benchmark them against their own in-house models during testing. Under Federighi’s leadership, it seems that all open-source LLMs can be used by Apple engineers.
A LLM (large language model) is a type of machine learning model designed for natural language processing tasks such as language generation. They’re used in a wide range of applications, including chatbots, content creation, translation, and more. Some well-known examples include GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models, which are used in applications like ChatGPT.
By the way, with Rockwell leaving the Technology Development Group, the Vision Pro will now be under the stewardship of Paul Meade, who has run hardware engineering for the Vision Pro under Rockwell. Meade has led hardware development for the spatial computer. He’s one of software chief Craig Federighi’s lieutenants, overseeing the underlying architecture of the company’s operating systems
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