Apple is apparently looking to take all the help it can get to integrate generative AI into its recently announced Apple Intelligence. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing sources with knowledge of the discussions, Apple has held talks with Meta about the possibility of using the company's generative AI model. It also reportedly had similar discussions with startups Anthropic and Perplexity. As of now, though, nothing has been finalized, WSJ reports. At WWDC earlier this month, Apple officially announced its much-rumored partnership with OpenAI that will bring ChatGPT to newer iPhones, iPads and Macs with the upcoming generation of the devices' OS.

To boldly go where no man has gone before. That's the mission of the USS Enterprise -- and arguably the aim of a 1-million prize being offered through a foundation created to honor the father of the "Star Trek" franchise. The Roddenberry Foundation -- named for Gene Roddenberry -- announced Tuesday that this year's biennial award would focus on artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. Lior Ipp, chief executive of the foundation, told The Times there's a growing recognition that AI is becoming more ubiquitous and will affect all aspects of our lives. "We are trying to … catalyze folks to think about what AI looks like if it's used for good," Ipp said, "and what it means to use AI responsibly, ethically and toward solving some of the thorny global challenges that exist in the world."

Artificial intelligence (AI) has succeeded spectacularly in certain kinds of tasks. These include playing specific games, such as Chess or Go, and finding patterns in images, such as identifying when a human organ is diseased or otherwise abnormal. It has done much less well in situations requiring more generalised learning, such as in understanding a text, or translating it from one language into another. Worse, acting like a human by expressing--and, especially, feeling--appropriate emotions seems well beyond AI's capacity. AI is good at some specialised tasks, but not as good at more general ones.

Should designers care about artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML)? There is no question that technology is adding texture to the current zeitgeist. Never could I have imagined seeing a blockbuster hit where Ryan Reynolds emerges as a conscious non-player character in a video game and a flop where Melissa McCarthy negotiates humanity's future with a James Corden-powered superintelligence within a year of each other. But does learning AI and ML's ins and outs really matter for the creative professions and our nebulous, invaluable way of operating? Helen Armstrong, a professor of graphic design at NC State, thinks so.

OneZero's General Intelligence is a roundup of the most important artificial intelligence and facial recognition news of the week. Like every big tech company, Apple is in dire need of A.I. programmers. These algorithms serve as a foundation for everything from processing photos to make them look brighter and sharper to powering Siri to maybe even driving that Apple car. So, in 2016, the company hired a well-known Carnegie Mellon professor named Ruslan Salakhutdinov to lead its A.I. division and, in a surprising move by the typically tight-lipped company, launched a research blog to publish some of its own work. Apple makes some of its work public because the backbone of the A.I. field is still academic, and the ability to publish new research is a primary consideration for PhDs entering the world of tech.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Hesse's Science Minister Boris Rhein and President of Darmstadt University of Technology (TU Darmstadt) Hans Jurgen Promel attend a demonstration of a rescue robot at the university in Darmstadt, Germany, October 8, 2018. Germany plans to invest more than 3 billion euros ($3.39 million) by 2025 to beef up its artificial intelligence capabilities and appoint 100 professors to lecture about it, as it seeks to close a digital technology gap with other leading economies.

Among CPG companies' most underused assets are the vast quantities of data they generate. But there's still opportunity to invest in industry-beating analytic capabilities. Consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies have increasingly gained access to unprecedented amounts of data, and we expect that this trend will intensify over time. However, most companies are generating very limited insight from these newly found sources, leaving a treasure chest of opportunities untapped. Companies that have already captured benefits from this trove of insight are reaching the next frontier of performance.

Facebook and Google are two of Silicon Valley's leaders in artificial intelligence. They have both invested heavily in AI, hiring loads of top researchers to develop projects like the Facebook Messenger "smart" assistant M, or Google's in-the-works AI-powered chatbot. While Facebook and Google are duking it out in international competitions, the two companies are far from alone in their efforts to dominate the space. As for the rest of Silicon Valley, research firm CB Insights recently published a report on the AI investments the tech industry is making.

Software giant Microsoft has continued its diversification drive with the launch of a bunch of clever things loosely grouped into the artificial intelligence silo. While Microsoft had a slight fall from grace during the late 90s and 00s with the rise of more millennial-friendly technologies, its recent surge in the cloud computing market has put the giant firmly back in the top division. Cloud computing has positioned the vendor as a must-have for numerous CIOs around the world, and now the team are looking towards one of the next major technology booms to fuel further growth; artificial intelligence. There are a number of players throughout the industry who are making moves in the potentially lucrative AI industry, though Microsoft looks to be one which has the strongest footing. True, Google's Deepmind and IBM's Watson have arguably made more progress in the AI arena, though Microsoft's current penetration into the world of enterprise technology gives it a notable advantage, even if it is playing catch-up on the AI side of things.

USA TODAY'S Ed Baig compares Google Home to the Amazon Echo. Ask Google Assistant inside Google Home what it thinks of Amazon Echo's Alexa and you get a gracious reply: "I like Alexa's blue lights. Her voice is nice too." Civility aside, the standalone $129 Home speaker that becomes available Friday is Google's answer to the $179.99 Echo speaker, and a potentially strong answer at that, though Google is still in catchup mode and too often answered my voice queries with a "sorry I don't know how to help with that yet."