Apple’s new AI acquisition will help it make sense of data

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Dark data isn't as sinister as it sounds.
Photo: Lattice Data

Apple has acquired an AI company as part of its continued push to embrace artificial intelligence.

The company in question is the Menlo Park-based Lattice Data, which specializes in taking unstructured, “dark” data and transforming it into more useful, structured information. Apple acquired around 20 engineers as part of the deal.

According to TechCrunch, who reported the buyout, the price Apple paid for Lattice Data is in the realm of $200 million. The deal was concluded a couple of weeks ago, and in a statement from Apple, it gave its usual stock explanation for the acquisition: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Exactly what Apple has planned for the acquisition or its new engineers isn’t clear. However, the job of turning unstructured data into something that can be used by machine learning systems is something AI researchers continue to work on.

One explanation that TechCrunch puts forward is that Apple will be using Lattice Data’s engineers to work on Siri, which would make sense given that it is reportedly planning to launch a standalone Siri speaker in the near future — thereby making it more central to Apple’s product offerings. Apple previously switched over to using deep learning technology in July 2014.

Going big on AI

After lagging behind in AI research for a long time, Apple has been ramping up its investment in the field over the past several years. Late last year, Apple researchers published the company’s first ever research paper, describing a method for training AI algorithms to recognize images.

This move is one of many Apple has taken to make it more appealing to AI researchers. A previous report suggests that Apple’s user privacy policy has gotten in the way of it recruiting some AI students — since they want access to the kind of data Apple doesn’t collect about its customers.

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