Apple has just introduced the latest iPad Air and iPad Pro as well as the M4 chip which focuses on artificial intelligence (AI). It’s no surprise that they took this opportunity to show off a series of new AI features on the iPad Air and iPad Pro.
Starting from the iPad Air which now has the M2 chip with a faster CPU, GPU and neural engine. Apple calls the iPad Air a very powerful device for AI.
This tablet is equipped with a number of AI features for designing and editing photos such as ‘visual lookup’ which can identify objects in photos, ‘subject lift’ which can separate photo subjects to be moved or edited, and ‘live text capture’ which can copy, share, search, and translate text in images.
Apple also champions applications made by third parties such as Photomator which relies on an AI model that has been trained using 20 million professional photos to improve photos with just one click.
Meanwhile, the iPad Pro received an upgrade from the M2 chip to the M4 with a new generation CPU, GPU and machine learning accelerator which Apple claims can provide 50% faster performance than the M2 chip. Apple is also championing a neural engine or neural processing unit (NPU) in the M4 chip which is specifically for accelerating AI workloads.
“Today, when the chip industry is just starting to add NPUs to some of their processors, we have included industry-leading neural engines in our chips for years,” said Apple SVP Hardware Engineering John Ternus, as quoted by TechCrunch, Friday (10 /5/2024).
Unfortunately, Apple did not reveal a list of AI features that this powerful chip can utilize. They only mentioned the feature for scanning documents powered by AI and the ‘AI band member’ feature in the Logic Pro application.
“We’ve all had the experience of trying to scan documents in difficult lighting conditions to avoid shadows,” says Ternus.
“The new (iPad) Pro solves this problem. The tablet uses AI to automatically detect documents such as forms and receipts. If there are shadows in the way, the camera will immediately take multiple photos with the new adaptive flash. The photos are then stitched and the result is a better scan.
The features that Apple announced at last night’s Let Loose event were not as dramatic as those offered by Samsung via Galaxy AI. Apple seems to be saving announcements about its AI features for the WWDC 2024 event which will be held in June 2024.
