Welcome to the TechMame Ride Home for Monday, October 23rd, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Mark German suggests Apple is scrambling to go all in on generative AI. Also, will there be a mini-mac event by the end of this month? Octa had a breach, WorldCoin is dog-fitting its own tokens. Would you let your family pick your Tinder matches and do your kids like telling you where they are at all times? Here's a gemest today in the world of tech.
It's one of those Mark German Apple scoop Mondays where we need to lead off with the contents of Mark's weekend newsletter. Mark sources say that Apple was caught flat-footed by the generative AI revolution and is now on course to spend around a billion dollars a year to hardly add AI tech across everything. iOS 18, Siri, music, all their apps. But Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook says that Apple has been working on generative AI technology for years.
But I can tell you in no uncertain terms that Apple executives were caught off guard by the industry's sudden AI fever and have been scrambling since late last year to make up for lost time. There's a lot of anxiety about this and it's considered a pretty big miss internally, a person with knowledge of the matter told power on. As I first reported in July, the company built its own large language model called AJAX and rolled out an internal chatbot dubbed Apple GPT to test out the functionality.
The critical next step is determining if the technology is up to snuff with the competition and how Apple will actually apply it to its products. Apple's senior vice presidents in charge of AI and software engineering, John Gianna and Dreia and Craig Federighi are spearheading the effort on Cook's team, they're referred to as the executive sponsors of the generative AI push. At EQ, the head of services is also involved I'm told.
The trio are now on course to spend about a billion dollars per year on the undertaking. Gianna and Dreia is overseeing development of the underlying technology for a new AI system and his team is revamping Siri in a way that will deeply implement it. This smarter version of Siri could be ready as soon as next year, but there are still concerns about the technology and it may take longer for Apple's AI features to spread across its product line.
Federighi's software engineering group meanwhile is adding AI to the next version of iOS. There's an edict to fill it with features running on the company's large language model or LLM which uses a flood of data to hone AI capabilities. The new features should improve how both Siri and the messages app can field questions and autocomplete sentences mirroring recent changes to competing services.
Apple software engineering teams are also looking at integrating generative AI into development tools like Xcode, a move that could help app developers write new applications more quickly. That would bring it in line with services like Microsoft's GitHub Co-Pilot which offers autocomplete suggestions to developers while they write code. And Q's organization is pushing to add AI to as many apps as possible. The group is exploring new features for Apple Music including auto-generated playlists.
This is something Spotify rolled out earlier this year in partnership with OpenAI as well as the company's productivity apps. Q's team is examining how generative AI can be used to help people write in apps like pages or auto-create slide decks and keynote. Again, this is similar to what Microsoft has already launched for its word and PowerPoint apps. Apple is also testing generative AI for internal customer service apps within its Apple Care group I've previously reported.
One debate going on internally is how to deploy generative AI as a completely on-device experience, a cloud-based setup or something in between. An on-device approach would work faster and help safeguard privacy, but deploying Apple's LLMs via the cloud would allow for more advanced operations. The on-device strategy also makes it harder for Apple to update its technology and adapt to a fast-changing industry.
With that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if the company adopts a combined approach using on-device processing for some features and the cloud for more advanced tasks. As the great Dar Abasanjo said on-mastodon quote, I will believe Apple is taking generative AI seriously when they delete all of the Siri code and replace it with a wrapper over a chat GPT. Siri has been a failed experiment for 12 years and it's time to put it out of our misery for the good of every iPhone user.
P.S., Mark also believes that Apple is planning a Mac-centered product launch around the end of this month, so maybe next week. Therein they would likely release an updated 24-inch iMac because the current iMac models launched all the way back in April of 2021. Cybersecurity firm Octas Stock closed down 11.57% on Friday after that company said a hacker accessed its support system using a stolen credential and viewed client files.
Now you know my high bar for doing security stories, but look, this is Octa. The key security and identity and credentials and permissions company. So sort of a big deal. Quoting CNBC. Octa said the hackers were able to access the system using a stolen credential. Octa's customer offerings including its production service were not impacted and are fully operational.
The company said some of the largest companies in the world use Octa to streamline their login and identity management systems including FedEx and Zoom according to the company. That makes Octa a high value target for threat actors who in a worst-case scenario could hypothetically gain access to dozens of other companies if successful in breaching Octa's defenses. The breach disclosed Friday does not impact client systems just to support platform Octa uses to help its clients diagnose issues.
We have notified impacted customers and taken measures to protect all our customers the company said. Follow up to a story from last week. Patty Cosgrave has stepped down as the CEO of Web Summit, which plans to appoint a new CEO. The upcoming Web Summit event set to start on November 13 in Lisbon will go ahead as planned, but both alphabet and meta are among the latest companies saying they wouldn't attend.
Unfortunately my personal comments have become a distraction from the event and our team, our sponsors, our startups and the people who attend. Cosgrave said in the statement, I sincerely apologize again for any hurt I have caused. In addition to Alphabet's Google and Meta, Amazon Intel Siemens, Stripe and a raft of venture capitalists said they'd cancelled plans to come to the show.
A group of Israeli investors issued a joint statement calling for a boycott of the event according to a report from Israeli news site Calcalist. Still, the resignation was a surprise after Cosgrave indicated as recently as last week that he'd stay on and reassured employees that the show had enough money in the bank to continue for at least two years according to a report earlier on Saturday from Irish newspaper, the business post citing Web Summit employees it didn't identify.
Cosgrave founded Web Summit in Dublin in 2009 with David Kelly and dare Hickey before it moved the main conference to Portugal in 2016. While the show became Europe's largest tech gathering and attracted tech companies and celebrities from all over the world, Cosgrave has courted controversy before end quote. Not sure what to make of this, but I am putting it here as I like to do in case it becomes something somewhere down the road.
China has apparently opened a Foxconn investigation over tax and land use, inspecting various Foxconn locations, Foxconn says it plans to cooperate, quoting the Financial Times. China has launched an investigation into Apple iPhone maker Foxconn over tax and land use Chinese state media reported on Sunday.
The Global Times article quoted an expert saying Taiwan funded enterprises including Foxconn should also assume corresponding social responsibilities and play a positive role in promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations end quote. Foxconn founder Terry Gao is running as an independent candidate in Taiwan's presidential elections in January, a contest that will have a significant influence on Taiwan's relationship with China and tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
Gao who handed Foxconn management to a successor chief executive four years ago resigned his seat on the board in early September after announcing his presidential run, but retains a 12.5% stake in the company. Beijing has in the past targeted local subsidiaries of Taiwanese companies with regulatory probes and political pressure at sensitive or tense times. Chinese officials frequently urge Taiwanese companies to help promote quote, peaceful development between the two sides and quote.
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From the, I guess this is dog fooding your own product file, the World Coin Foundation says it plans to pay or operators those folks who scan people and specifically scan their eyeballs into the World Coin network, pay them in the WLD coin rather than cash, quoting the block. The Foundation also gave an update on the WLD tokens circulating supply, which has reached over 1% of its total supply of 10 billion tokens.
Of the approximately 134 million WLD issued, 100 million were given as loans to market makers, well, 34 million have been distributed to users and or operators in the form of grants. With the loans set to expire on October 24th, World Coin announced that the agreements would be renewed until December 15th of this year with a reduced amount of 75 million tokens.
Market makers will return or alternatively purchase some or all of the remaining 25 million as part of the agreement and quote, and quoting from coin telegraph. According to an October 22nd announcement, World Coin says, or operators independent ecosystem participants tasked with scanning people's irises and exchange for WLD tokens will cease to be paid in USDC as of November. The change will affect most jurisdictions.
World Coin says the move to pay or operators entirely in WLD was part of a transitional phase following the official launch of the project on July 24th. On October 10th, the World Coin Foundation kicked off a pilot program to grant select operators with payment in WLD tokens. Couple of stories now about families and tech. First up, Tinder has rolled out Tinder matchmaker, which lets loved ones view and recommend potential matches for you.
This is rolling out in the US, the UK, and 13 other countries ahead of a global launch soon. Quoting the verge. Tinder's new matchmaker feature lets users invite their loved ones regardless of whether they have a Tinder profile or not to view and recommend potential matches, essentially integrating a friend test into the dating app.
Users can start a matchmaker session either directly from a profile card or within the app settings creating a link that can be shared with up to 15 friends or family members, participating loved ones or matchmakers then have 24 hours to recommend profiles before the session expires. Matchmakers cannot chat or send messages to potential dates on behalf of the user who invited them.
Once the matchmaker session expires, the Tinder user can then review which potential dating candidates their loved ones have suggested. Profiles liked by the matchmakers will be marked as a recommendation, but the Tinder user who invited them still has the final say on who to officially like in the app. Tinder says that profiles marked as nope, by matchmakers won't change.
If your friends and family are anything like mine, then I can see matchmaker being used more for trolling than to actually help your love life, but it's still a neat feature for folks who need a vibe check for their dates. According to a study commissioned by Tinder, over 75% of young singles discuss their dating habits multiple times a month with their friends, so this just optimizes the process a little. If you're down on your luck anyway, why not let your grandma vet your next date.
And finally today, let me turn you on to a potentially big player probably flying under your radar unless you have kids. The journal says that members of Generation Z are heavy users of family location sharing apps to bolster a sense of security such as during dates or at concerts. And one of the big apps that they use, this is the player I want to turn you on to, is Life360, which now has more than 33 million US monthly active users.
Quoting the journal, members of Gen Z ages 11 to 26 say they use family location sharing apps to bolster a sense of security. Downloads of Life360 doubled in the US since 2021. The app now has more than 33 million monthly active users in the US and another 20 million internationally. And more teens share their location using Apple's fine my Google's family link snapchets, snap map and GPS equipped smartwatches.
Gen Z respondents to a recent survey from Life360 said they share their location when they drive when they go on dates and when they attend concerts and other large gatherings. Many keep location sharing on at all times. Emery Littig's biggest fear is being abducted. A 10 year old girl in her hometown of Davenport, Iowa was kidnapped and murdered by a relative in July 2020. She took eight months to find her body. News coverage of the case was constant and it left Emery shaken.
If something happened to me, I think it would be useful for my parents to know my last location, she says. Emery now a 16 year old high school junior began using Life360 even before the kidnapping when she was in sixth grade. I was a very anxious kid, she says. She says the yearbook survey from last school year showed that half of the more than 1500 students at her school used the app.
Her friend group of 12 all share their location with one another in it. 10 teens don't have a good relationship with their parents or just don't want them to constantly know where they are. Emery says she knows a couple of teens who refuse to be on Life360 with their parents. Emery though likes knowing that if she's in a car accident, her parents will receive an alert. She was riding with friends last year in Des Moines more than two hours from home when her friends sister reared another car.
Emery's phone detected that they had come to a hard stop and the app notified her parents, the girls were fine. Emery also relies on Life360 when she goes to parties. In freshman year she was at a party where teens were drinking and a boy was hitting on her. She texted her parents to pick her up. She didn't have to ask anyone at the party for the address because her parents could see where she was on the app. They were there in less than 20 minutes she recalls and quote.
So the language's experimental episode over the weekend was interesting thanks to all of you that got in touch to give me your assessment of the AI versions of the show in various languages. The consensus seems to be the tech it's close but maybe it's not quite there yet though it does depend apparently on the language.
Apparently Chinese was the worst with the various inflections and tones inherent in Cantonese and Mandarin being problematic and also apparently it tended to mix between those two languages quite often. Other complaints about the Indian Arabic versions as well though it seems in the Arabic version some of you heard just English in some sections.
German and Spanish were apparently better which raises the question should I test other languages that are closer linguistically to English, a French version maybe or even a Dutch version we seem to have a lot of listeners in the Netherlands. Don't know maybe we'll test again we'll see talk to you tomorrow.