The Next Generation iPhone Might Come With An AI Chip

Smartphones are getting even smarter. While the iPhone 7 was a good addition to the family, we might have something more amazing. The rumor has it that Apple is working on an AI chip for the new iPhone. If installed, it could possibly prolong battery life (which it very desperately needs, to be honest) as well as performing feats that usually require human intervention, according to an anonymous informant related to Apple.

Right now, current Apple technologies rely on their main processor and it’s built-in graphics card to deal with AI functions such as Siri, iPhotos’ facial recognition features, predictive typing, etc. However, these processors and graphics cards aren’t meant to handle such complicated and heavy technologies, hence why an iPhone’s battery life is so short.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Now, however, the AI chips, known by the company as the “Apple Neural Engine”, is planned to be integrated in all new Apple devices after its release, and it’s specifically designed to cope with the high processing power that these AI-based programs need.

Apple is very secretive about their projects and chooses to reveal nothing before their actual pre-release press conferences, so they have chosen not to comment on these reports. However, fear not, as Apple’s developer conference is going to begin sometime this June 2017. So similar to how Google announced their AI plans in their conference last May, we might hear more news about the upcoming AI chip, and whether or not it’s real.

One thing that makes us suspect that the AI chip is in fact real is that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said in a press release last March that the company is planning to expand into the Augmented Reality market. If they do, this AI chip would be a very vital part for them to be able to integrate such technology into their devices.

Source: YouTube, AmmonCunningham

And it isn’t just there, the AI chip for iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks also make sense in other news involving Apple. For example, they have recently bought Lattice Data technologies, which uses Artificial Intelligence to structure dark data (basically, data that can’t be used from an analytical standpoint, hence can’t be used by most artificial intelligence systems as a source “learn” from). Also, Apple’s new addition to the self-driving car industry, a piece of software mounted to a Lexus, has just been approved for testing on actual roads, and it uses GPS, radar, laser measuring, and computer vision features. All of which would make sense for an AI chip to handle.

Finally, their interest and plans to get into Artificial Intelligence technologies can also be seen with the company itself joining the “Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society,” which is basically a “think tank” composed of multiple companies and corporations that focus, develop, explore, and implement AI technology. Other members include Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, and they’re all partners in the project to help make AI a useful tool for humanity to have at their disposal.

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