Apple’s much-maligned spelling software is getting upgraded by artificial intelligence: Using sophisticated language models, the new autocorrect won’t just check words against a dictionary, but will be able to consider the context of the word in a sentence.
The next generation of autocorrect was one of several small updates to the iPhone experience that Apple announced earlier this month. The Photos app will be able to differentiate between your dog and other dogs, automatically recognizing your pup the same way it recognizes people who frequently appear in your pictures. And AirPods will get smarter about adjusting to background noise based on your listening over time.
All of these features are powered by AI—even if you might not know it from how Apple talks about them. Its conference unveiling the updates included zero mentions of AI, now a buzzword for tech companies of all stripes. Instead, Apple used more technical language such as machine learning or transformer language model. Apple has been quiet about the technology—so quiet that it has been accused of falling behind… But Apple is pushing forward with AI in small ways, an incrementalist approach that nonetheless still might be the future of where this technology is headed…
Like the rest of Silicon Valley, Apple may soon take bigger swings. Daniel Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, thinks Apple’s new AI features amount to “just the appetizer before the main entrée.” His team has estimated that the company has spent $8 to $10 billion on AI in the past four or five years—the same amount that Microsoft invested in OpenAI in January — and Apple is reportedly on the hunt for AI talent.
