With the launch of devices like the HomePod, it is clear that Apple is hoping that more users will turn to the use of Siri, its digital assistant. Apple has made great strides over the years improving on the feature, but we suppose there’s always room for improvement and Apple’s latest acqui-hire might have confirmed it.In a report from TechCrunch, it seems that Apple might have recently acquired a startup called Init.ai. If you’re unfamiliar with the company, not to worry but basically what they do is offer a smart assistant service for customer representatives to help parse information and gain better insights from their interactions with users, and it will also help to automate certain interactions as well.
The company has announced on their website that their service will be discontinued at the end of the year. “Today is an exciting day for our team. Init.ai is joining a project that touches the lives of countless people across the world. We are thrilled and excited at the new opportunities this brings us. However, this means Init.ai will discontinue its service effective December 16th 2017. While we wish to make this transition as smooth as possible, we cannot continue to operate Init.ai going forward.”
While they do not mention the reason why, TechCrunch has learnt that the team behind the project will be joining Apple. It is unclear what Apple plans to do with the team, but like we said given what the company does, it seems that it could be towards improving on Siri, although we suppose we’ll never really know for sure.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence), iOS and Siri.