Recent AI news and official updates

TechCrunch AI published: Can Apple's new AI glow-up put to bed accusations that it's losing an all-important industry race?

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: Given how badly burned anyone who took Apple's 2024 WWDC Apple Intelligence announcements at face value was, I'm holding to a strict "I'll believe it when I see it" policy for everything they announced today . The new Siri AI features do at least look feasible with today's technology, especially since Apple are licensing a custom Gemini-derived model that they can run on their own Private Cloud Compute . It sounds like they'll be taking advantage of vision LLMs to extract information from the user's screen, which neatly sidesteps the need for every existing application to ship custom code in order to integrate with Apple Intelligence. Vision LLMs were a much less mature category in June 2024. The new Core AI library looks like a good step in enabling developers to finally take full advantage of Apple's hardware for running their own models. It integrates with Meta's open source PyTorch ecosystem, using these Core AI PyTorch extensions : Core AI PyTorch Extensions ( coreai-torch ) is a Python package that bridges PyTorch and Core AI. You can use it to bring up an existing PyTorch model — exported as a torch.export.ExportedProgram — into a Core AI AIProgram ready to run on Apple hardware, traversing the FX graph node-by-node and mapping ATen operators to Core AI operations. You can install an iOS 27 Developer Beta today, which supposedly has the new features - but you then have to make it through a waiting list for access to the new Siri AI. Aaron Perris from MacRumors reports having made it off the waitlist so we may start seeing credible reports on how well Siri AI works in the very near future. Update : These Private Cloud Compute Gemini models are running in Google Cloud, and using NVIDIA hardware. According to Expanding Private Cloud Compute on Apple's Security Research blog: For the most demanding tasks, including agentic tool-use and complex reasoning, we worked with Google and NVIDIA to extend our PCC infrastructure to Google Cloud systems using NVIDIA GPUs, while maintaining Apple's powerful security and privacy protections. [...] PCC on Google Cloud leverages many of the same architectural security patterns as PCC on Apple silicon to implement these layered protections: initial network data parsing for each request happens in a dedicated process within its own namespace, shared inference software is recycled with a short time-to-live duration, and attested keys are held in a separate, dedicated confidential VM isolated from external inputs. [...] As with PCC on Apple silicon, all binaries will be published for public inspection. Tags: vision-llms , apple , generative-ai , ai , llms , gemini , nvidia , google

TechCrunch AI published: Tools for Humanity, Sam Altman's identity verification company, is reportedly struggling to generate revenue and will downsize its staff.

TechCrunch AI published: The vibe of Apple's 2026 WWDC keynote felt like a spouse proudly listing all the honey-do-list items tackled. One subtle example: the many AI demos of someone standing, phone in hand.

TechCrunch AI published: The filing comes a little more than a week after its main rival, Anthropic, also filed to go public, ramping up the race between the two AI firms.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple spent much of its WWDC keynote highlighting fixes, performance improvements, and long-requested features before unveiling its upgraded AI-powered Siri, signaling that the company wants users to see AI as just one part of a broader effort to improve its software.

TechCrunch AI published: As AI experimentation grows more expensive, Apple is waiving cloud API costs for developers with fewer than 2 million first-time App Store downloads.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple primarily made the case for an improved experience with its longstanding Siri assistant, which like most other announcements had a hefty helping of AI.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple is adding new AI-powered features to Safari, Shortcuts, and Password apps.

TechCrunch AI published: Shortcuts gets an AI upgrade, letting you describe the workflow you want in a prompt.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple's AI image generator is getting a makeover that could make it more competitive.

TechCrunch AI published: A new spatial "Reframe" feature will let users use AI to adjust perspectives.

TechCrunch AI published: The idea behind the new "Siri AI" is to turn the assistant from a voice controlled assistant into an AI companion that can do a lot more.

TechCrunch AI published: A new feature in the Amazon Shopping app allows users to generate designs with Alexa, then print them on products like T-shirts, hoodies, and tumblers.

MIT Technology Review published: This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why this year’s World Cup ball may not fly as far Much is new about this month’s FIFA World Cup tournament. It hosts more teams than ever before. It’s the first…

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: Release: datasette-agent-edit 0.1a0 I'm planning several plugins for Datasette Agent which can make edits to existing pieces of text - things like collaborative Markdown editing, updating large SQL queries, and editing SVG files. Agentic editing of text is a little tricky to get right. My favorite published design for this is for the Claude text editor , which implements the following tools: view - view sections of a file, with line numbers added to every line. str_replace - find an exact old_str and replace it with new_str - fail if the original string is not unique insert - insert the specified text after the specified line number Rather than recreate these patterns for every plugin that needs them I decided to create this base plugin, datasette-agent-edit , which implements the core tools in a way that allows them to be adapted for other plugins. Tags: ai , datasette , generative-ai , llms , llm-tool-use , datasette-agent

TechCrunch AI published: We're likely to see more price increases as the big AI companies plan to go public.

TechCrunch AI published: "Chat is dead" — at least, according to a senior OpenAI employee.

TechCrunch AI published: Even with Lockdown Mode, ChatGPT could be vulnerable to prompt injections, but the goal is to reduce the likelihood that sensitive data gets shared in the process.

TechCrunch AI published: Krishnan is reportedly starting a new institution to continue shaping Trump's AI policy.