Will Apple's AI model 'Ferret' enrich Siri later this year?

Apple is working on a multimodal generative AI model called Ferret. — Photography Generated by OpenAI's DALL·E/ETX Majelan/AFP Relaxnews

Who said Apple isn't investing in artificial intelligence? The US-based company is working on a multimodal language model that could soon provide a boost to many tools, from its intelligent assistant Siri to Photos. Called Ferret, it is the Cupertino firm's answer to Google's recently unveiled Gemini.

Artificial intelligence was undoubtedly a major theme in the tech realm for the year 2023. Yet one company, and by no means a marginal one, has been particularly discreet on the subject – Apple. As 2024 gets underway, the company is still not communicating officially on the subject, but specialist American media are reporting that, last autumn, an open source version of a multimodal language model developed in collaboration with Cornell University, in the state of New York, was put online and made accessible via GitHub,