Apple Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup To Boost Siri?

Ilustrasi (Image Credit: Zhiyue Xu / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Apple is again acquiring an artificial intelligence (AI) developer company, Vilynx. The startup is developing an AI that can understand video content by looking at its visual, audio and text cues.

According to a Bloomberg report quoted by Business Insider, Wednesday, October 28, Vilynx is using its technological capabilities to make tags to make videos more searchable and help it categorize and tag metadata, generate automatic video previews, and recommend related content.

Apple reportedly paid 50 million United States (US) dollars or around Rp.733 billion to acquire the startup. In fact, Apple has a habit of buying small companies secretly.

In 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company had purchased 20 startups over a six-month span, while only six were known to the public.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we don't usually discuss our goals or plans," said Apple.

It is known that Apple can take advantage of the technology that Vilynx is working on in various ways. One of them, where the Vilynx software can make the application search functionality more powerful, especially in terms of video.

The Apple TV and News apps will benefit in the same way, as will Siri. Others, Apple is reportedly working on a search engine to satisfy antitrust regulators, where the technology could help its competitor, Google Search.

Several times, Cook has also discussed the potential of augmented reality, which could also use AI-based tools like Vilynx.

It claims the purchase will also deepen Apple's AI technology expertise, with as many as 50 engineers and data scientists joining from Vilynx, and the startup Barcelona office will become one of Apple's major AI research centers in Europe.