One month before an expected WWDC 2024 edition at the turning point in terms of artificial intelligence, Tim Cook’s secret plan is becoming clearer. According to Bloombergsome of the new functions of iOS 18 and macOS 15 will depend on servers equipped with Apple processors.
Basic generative AI tasks, such as summarizing received notifications, should be performed directly by Macs, iPhones and iPads. This is the path that Apple has followed so far for the common functions of its operating systems. But new, more complex functions, which require more resources, will require execution on powerful servers (and therefore an internet connection), argues Mark Gurman of Bloomberg. Among them, there could be image generation or summaries of long texts.
Apple has always presented local processing of tasks as a way to ensure the confidentiality of personal data, which does not leave the user’s device for the operation. How can you maintain customer trust if their data becomes airborne? The answer lies in the nature of the components of these servers.
These will be equipped with Apple chips, in this case M2 Ultra, says Mark Gurman, who thus confirms the statements of analyst Jeff Pu and the Wall Street Journal. According to members involved in the creation of the project Apple Chips in Data Centersthe in-house chips represent a guarantee of protection of user data, a guarantee that is in fact nebulous without information on the entire data processing system on the servers.
This project for executing AI tasks in a cloud based on in-house chips would have been developed three years ago, before the launch of ChatGPT, but the race launched by the latter would have forced Apple to accelerate its development. Apple is already preparing M4 chips capable of replacing the M2 Ultra for this mission.
