For complex iPhone AI tasks, Apple will use cloud-based servers running M-series chips

Apple is planning on having more complex AI tasks for iPhones, iPads, and Macs get sent through the cloud to data centers using servers powered by Apple's powerful in-house chips. Less complicated AI tasks will be handled directly on-device which will make them faster and more secure. According to a report in Bloomberg written by the news agency's chief Apple correspondent Mark Gurman, the first chips to be used to power the servers in the data centers will be the M2 Ultra. That chip is currently used to run the Mac Pro and Mac Studio. 

The scuttlebutt calls for Apple to eventually develop an M4 Ultra chip to power the servers in the data centers. Apparently Apple had come up with a plan to use its own chips and cloud-based servers to run complex AI tasks three years ago but decided to accelerate the timeline once OpenAI kicked off the latest AI craze with the ChatGPT chatbot. In December 2022, when ChatGPT first started to become known to the public, Gmail developer Paul Buchheit said that AI will do to internet search what Google did to the Yellow Pages. Namely, make the older technology obsolete.

On June 10th Apple will kick off WWDC 2024 and the keynote held on that day will preview the AI changes that Apple is planning for iOS 18 and Siri. It is being billed as the largest iOS update ever and we could see things like text summarization, AI-based search options, and document analysis on Safari, Siri, Messages, Mail, and Spotlight Search.

If you're like me, you can't wait to see how Siri is affected by Apple's AI initiative. The virtual digital assistant, originally launched with the iPhone 4s in 2011, soon found itself not as useful as Google Assistant with too many responses consisting of excepts from three websites. Hopefully the use of AI will help Siri deliver more precise responses to queries.