On its new Eurotrip after the iPhone 15 release, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has told BBC News that Apple plans to hire UK AI staff as the company aims to ramp up generative AI research. Interestingly, this comes at a time when most big techs are doing layoffs to remove redundancy. In addition, yesterday, Epic Games announced it was cutting 15% of its workforce.
When asked about AI and jobs in the UK, Apple’s CEO said: “We’re hiring in that area, yes, and so I do expect [investment] to increase.”
Although Apple doesn’t mention that much of AI word, Artificial Intelligence is behind several products from the company – on its cameras, Siri, fall detection, crash detection, etc. “It’s literally everywhere on our products, and of course, we’re also researching generative AI as well, so we have a lot going on,” Tim Cook said.
Interestingly, this interview comes a month after Tim Cook told Reuters that Cupertino has been working in generative AI for years now. “We’ve been doing research across a wide range of AI technologies, including generative AI, for years. We’re going to continue investing and innovating and responsibly advancing our products with these technologies to help enrich people’s lives,” Tim Cook said. “Obviously, we’re investing a lot, and it is showing up in the R&D spending that you’re looking at.”
While Apple could eventually release its own GPT or integrate Artificial Intelligence into its products with Final Cut Pro or Xcode, the company has been using other terms to talk about AI, such as machine learning and neural engines.
Lastly, it’s important to highlight a previous report from Bloomberg that says Apple is working on its own generative AI language. Still, it might never launch to users, as it’s currently restricted to employees. That said, the company recently stated it’s already using the results of its own generative AI language model in real products that we see with Maps and Photos apps, for example.