Apple India job posts suggest AI search is coming to Siri, Safari, and Spotlight

Macworld

Apple published two job openings on LinkedIn and on its job search portal last week. In them, the Bangalore, India, location is looking for two engineers for its machine learning/artificial intelligence team. The two adverts are somewhat vague, but reveal some insights into Apple’s plans.

Our team is responsible for delivering next-generation Search and Question Answering systems across Apple products including Siri, Safari, Spotlight, and more…. You will collaborate with outstanding Search and AI engineers on large scale machine learning to improve Query Understanding, Retrieval, and Ranking, developing fundamental building blocks needed for AI powered experiences such as fine-tuning and reinforcement learning.
Job posting at Apple

The second job advert reads identically, but it is not looking for a senior engineer, just an AI expert.

Apple’s Eddy Cue confirmed in court that Apple is actively working on offering AI-powered search engines as an option in Safari. No details have yet been released. The two job adverts suggest that Apple is planning a mixture of Siri/ChatGPT and an active online search that not only searches information on the web, but also actively provides answers to questions. What is less surprising, however, is that the manufacturer wants to implement the new function for Siri, Safari, and Spotlight. If this is the case, the new search will act as an additional layer over the entire system.

Apple promised a personal Siri at the last WWDC 2024, but had to postpone it to an unknown date in the future as it wasn’t ready yet. There are no references to this in the job advertisements, but there are also dedicated job adverts for this team on Apple’s job portal.

This article first appeared on Macworld sister site Macwelt and has been translated from German.