Apple Plays Catchup In Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning, Goes On Hiring Spree

It might sound like a buzzword that's come out of nowhere, but "machine-learning" is big business. It's a business of ultimate importance, even - one that Google, Amazon, even NVIDIA, and now Apple are trying to capitalize on and become better at than their competitors.

In the past few months alone, we've seen Amazon release a machine-learning service which lets people tap into its expertise for a fee, Microsoft release an age-guessing tool, Google aim to improve spam filtering, and even some software that helps detect humor.

It's clear that machine-learning will be an enormous part of our future, a reality that Apple seems to have caught onto a bit late. While its competitors have been beefing up their brain power for machine-learning developments, Apple's only just now getting into hiring mode.

According to Reuters, Apple's been posting job listings all over that will see at least 86 people hired for its artificial intelligence division. One thing this could ultimately result in is Apple better competing with Google on its predictive search results technology - one that will be a challenge given that Apple tends to weigh user privacy a lot higher than its competitors.

Perhaps we'll learn a bit more during Apple's upcoming product unveiling event. It will take quite some time before this beefing-up of Apple's AI division is achieved though, so we're not going to likely see overnight changes.