Two days ago, in order to celebrate the opening of the largest Apple store in Asia, Cook personally went to Shanghai. The scene was really full of roaring gongs, drums, firecrackers, and flags waving in the air. The scalpers and onlookers counted down to 54,321 together. Those wh

Two days ago, in order to celebrate the opening of the largest Apple store in Asia, Cook personally went to Shanghai.

The scene was really full of roaring gongs, drums, firecrackers, and flags waving in the air. The scalpers and onlookers counted down to 54321 together. Those who didn’t know thought that Shanghai had celebrated New Year’s Eve early.

It’s hard to comment. Two days ago, the U.S. Department of Justice and 16 state and territory attorneys general sued Apple for monopolizing the smartphone market. The Chinese people are very enthusiastic about it.

Cook’s visit this time was not just to open the Apple store. In addition to meeting with leaders and eating xiaolongbao with Zheng Kai, he also visited several companies.

For example, BYD, folding paper games, Sandan and a half, Dewu...

Every time he visits a company, Cook will post a bilingual Weibo. For example, after visiting a company for three and a half, Cook expressed that he wants to make a drink To have good coffee, you must first use a mac to work.

When we report on AI, we are naturally concerned about another piece of news:

At noon on March 25, there was news that Baidu will provide AI functionality for iPhone 16.

makes a bold assumption that this is an important reason why Cook personally visited China.

Last week, technology reporter Mark Gurman reported that Apple will launch a series of AI features in iOS 18, and Apple internally believes that this will be the largest update in history. As soon as the news of

came out, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Apple’s AI mobile phone would be released soon. People are also more enthusiastic about whose big model the iPhone will be equipped with. According to rumors, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Baidu are all potential partners for Apple's cooperation.

On March 18, Bloomberg reported that Apple was negotiating with Google to integrate gemini into the iPhone. This isn't the first time the two tech giants have collaborated. For years, Google has spent $18 billion a year to become Safari's default search engine. If

's cooperation on large models is successful, I don't know who will pay the "protection fee" between Apple and Google. The

report also pointed out that Apple was in contact with openai not long ago. Apple CEO Cook talked about the experience of chatgpt last year and believed that chatgpt still has some problems. Maybe he was quite confident in his AI team at that time.

Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal continued to break the news that Apple will look for local generative AI providers for the Chinese market. Apple had negotiated with Baidu, Alibaba and another large domestic model company from Tsinghua University, but finally chose Baidu.

The so-called Tsinghua University model aroused Mr. Siji’s gossip heart. Tsinghua series large models basically account for half of the domestic large models, is it Zhipu AI, Light Years Beyond, Baichuan Intelligence, Dark Side of the Moon, or?

Of course, there is a high probability that Apple will eventually choose to cooperate with Baidu in the domestic market.

Does it sound familiar? In fact, this is not the first time Baidu has cooperated with foreign mobile phone brands on large models.

National Bank version s24 is based on Baidu's Wenxin large model and search engine, replacing Google's search service; equipped with Meitu's AI visual large model Miraclevision, it launches AI image modification, AI image expansion, AI image generation and other functions. This so-called "special care" of

has caused many Chinese consumers to complain, "the overseas international version of s24 ultra and the domestic version are simply two different worlds."

A technology blogger went to a Samsung store in Hong Kong to test it. found that the "circle to search" function supported by Baidu provided much fewer results than the overseas version supported by Google.

Some netizens reported that when testing the machine at domestic Samsung stores, the relevant AI functions required real-name logins into different apps, which also made the experience even worse.

If Apple is equipped with domestic large model services, I wonder if it can solve a series of localization problems.

In addition to Samsung, a number of domestic mobile phone manufacturers including Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo have all announced their own AI+ mobile phone strategies, using basically self-developed large models.

Huawei has added support for the Pangu large model for its smart assistant Xiaoyi on harmony os4; Xiaomi has added a large AI model for Xiao Ai; Oppo has introduced a large model with 7 billion parameters on the flagship find x7 series; vivo has launched self-developed Blue heart large model, deployed on the x100 series.

Speaking of Apple, Apple has always liked to be self-sufficient. Self-developed M series on the chip, getting rid of the limitations of Intel, in terms of software, Siri, iCloud, and even entertainment applications have to develop their own Apple Music and Apple TV.

Then why doesn’t Apple learn from domestic mobile phone manufacturers and use its own large models? In fact, Apple has been working on

, but it seems that it has not been completed.

Since the beginning of 2023, Apple has been testing its own large language model, known internally as "apple gpt", and built the AI ​​​​framework "ajax" for it.

Apple's AI director John Giannandrea, software engineering director Craig Federighi, and service director Eddy Cue lead the development of Apple's internal large model. The three plan to spend about $1 billion per year on large models.

According to reports from the information, Ajax's functionality has exceeded OpenAI's GPT 3.5 and has been trained with more than 200 billion parameters.

There is also news that Apple is training its own large model to improve Siri's ability to answer complex questions.

But so far, Apple's large-model technology is still inferior to Google and other competitors, and this blow has also prompted Apple to turn to cooperation.

In addition, technology reporter Mark Gurman also gave more possibilities. To put it simply, Apple believes that making large models is too expensive and risky. Instead of developing it all by itself, it is better to let other companies do it and let them spend money to install it on the iPhone.

Apple, which loves environmental protection, might actually do this.

Mark Gurman summarized several potential reasons why Apple chooses to cooperate with other companies on large models:

Apple may require Google or other companies to pay huge fees to ensure its dominance in the operating system field. If it were Google, the search giant could become the go-to provider of generative AI services on Apple and Android phones.

Apple is not interested in artificial intelligence chatbots, but they understand that consumers are eager to have such technology. This kind of cooperation can not only meet consumer needs, but also potentially bring additional revenue to Apple.

There are many ethical and privacy issues in the field of generative artificial intelligence. By outsourcing this technology to a third party, Apple can shift the responsibility to them, greatly reducing its own liability.

Running cloud-based generative artificial intelligence is very expensive and computationally intensive. By working with partners, others shoulder the hefty costs. The large

cooperation model helps Apple integrate artificial intelligence faster. For example, it could partner with local Chinese providers such as Baidu instead of facing regulators directly and localize its technology.

Apple will choose multiple partners in the supply chain, and it is not impossible that this habit will be extended to large models.

means that gemini, chatgpt, and claude3 mentioned above may appear in iPhone at the same time. There are even reports that Apple will directly open iOS so that any developer can build a generative AI system on the iPhone.

Apple itself is "sitting on the mountain and watching the tiger fight" to protect the privacy data of its users. According to reports, Apple has a feature called "project graymatter" that will be deployed directly on the device in iOS 18 to protect private data.

If this measure cannot achieve a good protection function, it is not impossible that Apple will give up cooperation in the end and not provide chatbots at all according to Apple's usual cautious attitude.

ai The competition in the mobile phone market is becoming increasingly fierce. Samsung has already taken the lead with the gemini function. Apple needs more innovation to bring greater sensation to the market.

After all, aside from Siri, Apple doesn’t offer any AI-focused apps or services to consumers so far.

But who knows if Apple will pull another bomb out of another envelope? The full text of

is completed.

Author: josie (internship), Dong Daoli

Editor: Zhang Zeyi

Visual design: Shu Rui

Editor in charge: Zhang Zeyi