Apple purchases another AI startup to improve data used by Siri
- maj
- 28
Apple continues to build up Siri's underlying technologies.
What you need to know
- Apple has acquired another AI startup.
- The company confirmed it has purchased Inductiv, Inc.
- Inductiv focused on using machine learning to automate error corrections in data.
Apple has acquired another AI startup in order to continue to build foundational technologies for Siri. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple has acquired Inductiv Inc., a machine-learning startup focused on error correction.
Apple has confirmed the deal with its usual canned statement saying that it "buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."
"The engineering team from Waterloo, Ontario-based Inductiv joined Apple in recent weeks to work on Siri, machine learning and data science. Apple confirmed the deal, saying it "buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."
Inductiv's technology focuses on using AI to correct errors in data sets, something that would be highly useful for Siri.
"Inductiv developed technology that uses artificial intelligence to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data. Having clean data is important for machine learning, a popular and powerful type of AI that helps software improve with less human intervention."
Bloomberg notes that the professor who co-founded Inductiv founded another AI company that was also purchased by Apple back in 2017.
"The professor from Stanford, Christopher Ré, previously co-founded another AI company, Lattice Data, that was bought by Apple in 2017. It's unclear if Ré, or the other Inductiv co-founders, Theodoros Rekatsinas and Ihab Ilyas, have joined Apple."
John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Strategy at Apple, joined the company after running search and AI efforts at Google. Under his leadership, Apple has made many acquisitions related to machine learning in order to develop Siri into a major competitor to the Google Assistant.