Apple's investment in artificial intelligence companies exceeds that of any major competitor and there has been a significant increase in related job advertisements, which supports the idea that Siri will receive major improvements at WWDC 2024. Apple has been recruiting generative artificial intelligence engineers, which once again confirms the statement that "Apple lags behind the industry in artificial intelligence applications."
Apple has also been acquiring companies such as WaveOne, an AI-driven video compression company, and recently published AI research papers. In fact, as early as 2017, Apple won an award for an artificial intelligence research paper.
Through reports on job advertisements, research papers and artificial intelligence investments, the Financial Times said that Apple is currently increasing its efforts to introduce ChatGPT-style generative artificial intelligence into the iPhone.
Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said: "(Apple) is preparing to do some major acquisitions. I would be shocked if they don't do a sizable AI deal this year because there is an AI arms race going on and Apple is not going to stay out of it."
The Financial Times cited equity investments and additional investments, saying Apple has made such investments in 21 companies since 2017. Accenture made 19 investments during the same period, while better-known AI rivals Microsoft and Meta made 12 and 11 investments respectively.
According to reports, Intel has invested in or acquired nine companies, and IBM and Google parent Alphabet have cooperated with eight companies each.
The Financial Times did not give a reason for starting the calculation from 2017. However, it is worth noting that Apple hired artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea from Google in 2018.
The report also cited a Morgan Stanley report saying that nearly half of Apple’s current job advertisements mention artificial intelligence, machine learning or deep learning. That's a significant increase from a November 2023 Morgan Stanley report, which said that since 2015, "Apple's AI-related job ads have risen from 5% of total Apple job ads to about 20% now."