Craig Federighi frees Apple engineers to use third-party LLMs to build Siri features

On Thursday, The Information released an in-depth report shedding new light on Apple’s recent challenges with Siri. The article delves into a host of internal tensions and disputes, while concluding with a significant revelation: Craig Federighi is now spearheading an initiative that, for the first time, allows Apple engineers to leverage third-party large language models (LLMs) to enhance Siri’s capabilities.
Wayne Ma for The Information:
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Apple managers told their engineers in 2023 they couldn’t include models from outside companies in final Apple products…
Federighi has already shaken things up. In a departure from previous policy, he has instructed Siri’s machine-learning engineers to do whatever it takes to build the best AI features, even if it means using open-source models from other companies in its software products as opposed to Apple’s own models, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ryan Christoffel for 9to5Mac:
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According to the report, until the recent Siri leadership changes, Apple engineers could only use third-party LLMs to benchmark them against their own in-house models during testing.
For additional context, engineers apparently did a lot of experimentation with OpenAI’s models but were restricted from actually using them in shipping features.
Building these models was mostly the responsibility of Giannandrea’s team. This frustrated members of the software group who wanted to build AI-powered features but found that Apple’s models “didn’t perform nearly as well as OpenAI’s technology.”
Now, under Federighi’s leadership, it seems that all open-source LLMs are on the table for Apple’s engineers.

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MacDailyNews Take: We’ll believe in a modern, useful Siri that actually works more often than it fails when we see it.
We’re certainly not surprised that Giannandrea’s LLMs suck.
Apple pays and has been paying John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, millions upon millions of dollars for years. WTF of any import does he really do? WTF of any import has he really delivered? Have you used Siri lately? Yup, it’s still a steaming pile of dogshit.
Where’s Apple’s generative AI, John? “Too hard; too late; look for partners; gimme my paycheck and stock options.”
AAPL shareholders need to start asking real questions of these executives, especially those who are supposedly in charge of Apple’s “AI Strategy,” when the company clearly has none. How about some accountability for once? – MacDailyNews, March 18, 2024

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