At WWDC, Apple unveiled a new transformative feature powered by a Transformer language that's set to enhance predictive text recommendations within upcoming iOS and macOS versions.
Jack Cook highlights this as Apple's foray into the more uncertain world of leveraging language models (LLMs), a change from their usual focus around polish and perfection. The feature raised questions about the underlying model, its architecture, and the training data used, with elusive details prompting further inquiry.
Key points:
Apple's adoption of the Transformer language model for predictive text recommendations in iOS and macOS reflects a strategic shift towards incorporating advanced language technologies.
The feature's operational mechanism involves suggesting completed individual words as users type, with occasional multi-word suggestions, demonstrating an evolving integration of predictive text functionality.
Uncertainties linger around the specifics of the model's framework, training data sources, and the extent of Apple's integration of Transformer-based technology.
Highlights
Apple hasn't deployed many language models of their own, despite most of their competitors going all-in on large language models over the last couple years. I see this as a result of Apple generally priding themselves on polish and perfection, while language models are fairly unpolished and imperfect.