Apple Developing AI Chip for iPhone

Call it coincidence or whatever, but if the latest story from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman is to be believed, Apple is "working on a processor devoted specifically to AI-related tasks." Internally called the Apple Neural Engine, the chip would help the electronics giant incorporate advanced artificial intelligence capabilities into its devices, the report further adds.

The development comes close on the heels of Google's similar effort (called Tensor Processing Unit) which it unveiled at its annual developers conference last week, even as rivals like Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft are busy plotting their own means to solving AI's insane thirst for data.

By offloading AI-intense tasks like facial and speech recognition and keyboard typing predictions to the chip (all of which require humongous amount of user data to deliver correct results) through privacy-preserving Differential Privacy techniques (What is it anyway?), Apple hopes to achieve on-device intelligence, something Google is also working on. After all, the next battle is over data and user privacy.