Apple poaching AI experts from Sundar Pichai’s Google for ‘secret’ Zurich lab: Report

Apple has hired several AI experts from Google to create a “secretive European laboratory” in Zurich, Financial Times reported. The team will build AI models and products, the report claimed after analysing a few LinkedIn profiles that revealed that Apple poached 36 specialists from Google since 2018. At the time Apple recruited Google’s John Giannandrea to be its top AI executive.

Apple's AI plans: What are they?

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Apple’s AI team operates out of California and Seattle. The company has also opened new offices in Zurich, Switzerland and acquired AI startups FaceShift (VR) and Fashwall (image recognition). The report claimed that employees in Apple's secret lab are involved in research regarding the underlying technology that supports OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the company is trying to build more advanced AI models.

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Who is on Apple's AI team currently?

Apple’s AI team includes ex-Google employee Giannandrea, former head of Google Brain, who is now part of DeepMind. He is now senior director of AI and ML research at Apple. Moreover, former head of AI speech recognition research at Google, Ruoming Pang, now heads Apple's "Foundation Models" team.

What's Apple's focus in terms of AI?

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Apple is expected to roll out AI-powered features in its upcoming iOS 18 update for the first time.