Apple makes $2B acquisition

[Cmaier]

One of Apple’s biggest acquisitions ever. Appears they are working on AI for allowing people to communicate without sound, by lip reading or something?

Apple acquires secretive Q․ai startup for $2 billion - 9to5Mac

Apple has acquired an Israeli-based AI startup called Q.ai, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The report...

9to5mac.com

 

[Eric]

One of Apple’s biggest acquisitions ever. Appears they are working on AI for allowing people to communicate without sound, by lip reading or something?

Apple acquires secretive Q․ai startup for $2 billion - 9to5Mac

Apple has acquired an Israeli-based AI startup called Q.ai, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The report...

9to5mac.com

We can no longer be bothered with actually reading or writing, why not take talking out of the mix, too?

I really didn’t think we would see slobbering human dolts as a result of AI in our lifetime, yet here we are.

 

[Roller]

We can no longer be bothered with actually reading or writing, why not take talking out of the mix, too?

I really didn’t think we would see slobbering human dolts as a result of AI in our lifetime, yet here we are.

If you're a brain in a vat, can you still slobber?

 

[Cmaier]

We can no longer be bothered with actually reading or writing, why not take talking out of the mix, too?

I really didn’t think we would see slobbering human dolts as a result of AI in our lifetime, yet here we are.

I can see one advantage to this - you’ve got your airpods in, for example, and want to talk to (the new and improved LLM-based) Siri or something, and don’t want to be overheard. One of the big problems with any speech-based interface is that it’s not private, and there are (barely hanging on) social norms against just talking to a computer out loud in a room full of people. If you could just mouth or whisper what you want to say and have that translated into normal speech or normal text, that could be useful.

And, of course, it could be a useful accessibility option for some people.

But for $2B I assume Apple has big plans for them.

 

[RockRock8]

"Apple buys audio AI firm Q.ai as it scrambles to upgade Siri" -AppleInsider

I shit you not: the blog that was late to this news, in a scramble to catch up with other blogs who already wrote about this, produced an embarrassingly and hilariously ironic typo in their headline.

And it gets worse: I saw someone that pointed this out. AppleInsider deleted the comment, and left up the typo. It's still there. "Upgade." This is why no one takes these asshole, narrative forcing crap blogs as serious.

 

[Yoused]

… you’ve got your airpods in, for example, and want to talk to (the new and improved LLM-based) Siri or something, and don’t want to be overheard. One of the big problems with any speech-based interface is that it’s not private …

Just keep an eye out for the new headpods, which look and function just like airpods, but they have a little metal contact stripe around the speaker that picks up your brainwave activity so you just think about what you want and it does that. Most of the time. Well, most of the time for the easy stuff, anyway. And, of course, it takes a few months to learn you. It will not be one of those things that Apple will want YT reviewers to be giving day-one impressions on, because it takes time to get to work right.