Artificial Intelligence in Practice

4Apple: Integrating AI Into Products And Protecting User Privacy

Apple is the world's largest information technology company by revenue. The California-based company designs, develops and sells iconic smart tech products such as the iPhone, iPad, Macs, Apple Watch, Apple TV, as well as accompanying software and services. In 2018, Apple became the first-ever public company to be valued at over US$1 trillion.¹

Apple's artificial intelligence (AI) strategy centers around its devices, and in recent years the company has positioned itself as a pioneer of in-device AI technology, citing its superior security and potential for creating unique, user-engaging experiences.

How Does Apple Use Artificial Intelligence?

Apple's vision for the future is powerful handheld devices that are capable of running their own machine learning on datasets gathered via their own array of sensors. This is clearly at odds with the vision of a future dominated by cloud computing and relatively low-powered terminals often championed by other tech companies.

This means running machine learning algorithms directly on their devices using powerful central processing unit or graphics processing unit chips built into their phones, watches or speakers.

One current example is the development of the Neural Engine inside the latest iPhone X models.² This is a custom-designed chip specifically designed for carrying out the neural net calculations needed for deep learning. This makes it faster to process functions ...