Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) sees its mobile devices as a major platform for artificial intelligence in the future, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said on Monday. Later this week, Apple is set to begin taking pre-orders for its new smartphone, the iPhone X – which starts at $999 and uses artificial intelligence (AI) features embedded in the company's latest A11 chips. The phone promises new facial recognition features such as Face ID that uses a mathematical model of a person's face to allow the user to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones. "We think that the frameworks that we've got, the'neural engines' we've put in the phone, in the watch ... we do view that as a huge piece of the future, we believe these frameworks will allow developers to create apps that will do more and more in this space, so we think the phone is a major platform," Williams said. He was speaking at top chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (2330.TW) 30th anniversary celebration in Taipei, which was attended by global tech executives.