Apple throws its hat into the AI-generated image ring
Apple, in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, has released its own AI-based image editing model that and anybody can try.

Image generated with Image Creator from Microsoft Designer
The model has been dubbed "MGIE," which stands for MLLM-Guided Image Editing and allows users to edit images based on natural language instructions. It leverages multimodal large language models (MLLMs), which combine various types of information, such as text, photos, and videos, to understand and generate human-like language.
While studies on MLLMs have shown promising results in understanding and generating images, they haven't been implemented widely yet.
MGIE was presented in a paper at the International Conference on Learning Representations 2024. The paper showcases how MGIE can improve automatic metrics and human evaluation while also maintaining competitive inference efficiency.
MGIE utilizes MLLMs to derive expressive instructions from user input. Venture Beat offers an example: a user could tell MGIE to "make the sky more blue," and MGIE would interpret this as "increase the saturation of the sky region by 20%."

How MGIE interprets natural language | Image Credit: Apple, UC Santa Barbara
Then, once the instructions are derived from the natural-language input, it generates an edited version of the image. It can be used to create a wide range of edits, ranging from color adjustments to generating or removing parts of an image.
MGIE is open-source and available on GitHub for anyone to try. The GitHub page allows users to snag the code, data, and pre-trained models.
The speed of image generation will vary significantly based on hardware performance. Also, models such as this are incredibly RAM hungry.
Apple has been working behind the scenes on its AI-assisted features for some time now. In January, code in the iOS 17.4 beta suggested that Apple is working on a new AI-powered version of Siri.
Apple stock has taken a beating as of late, in part because analysts have loudly proclaimed that the company is behind Meta, Google, and Microsoft in generative AI implementation. It's not clear why this wasn't a problem when it wasn't first to a mobile phone, a tablet, a smartwatch, or a VR headset, but is with generative AI.
Perhaps to dissuade those analysts, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that Apple is spending "a tremendous amount of time and effort" on AI features that will be announced in the coming months. He also noted that Apple has been working internally on generative AI.
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Apple the corporation doesn't get a cent more if the stock goes up, or a penny less if it goes down. But Cook and the rest of the upper management team certainly does, with much of their pay coming in the form of company stock rather than cash. Thus we have these kinds of kneejerk things announced by them now instead of the slow and steady development without broadcasting the internal baby steps that we typically expect from Apple.
It's silly when Samsung/Google/random tech company, responds to some new Apple service or product with "Hey, look what we're working on, it's just as good!" and equally as silly when Apple turns around and does the same thing.
Additionally, Apple has been working on AI for years... They have simply chosen to refer to it as "machine learning" instead. These have been the baby steps, as you call them, and it's unfounded to now say they're doing anything knee-jerk or just started putting resources into AI only recently. And putting out something open source before integrating it into their products, as outlined in this article, is also part of their baby steps.
Apple reacts to changes in market demands and technological advances just like any other organization which doesn't want to become a technological dinosaur. They would be doing the brand and shareholders a disservice if they didn't put significant resources into AI pursuits and there's no reason to think the fruits of those pursuits will not ultimately be integrated into their product line in thoughtful and useful ways. Nothing about this is silly.
I dunno how some of you can follow Apple with such obsession yet still be clueless about how they operate.
You’re confusing Apple for what other companies do, when in fact Apple is held to the light as the example of firms who don’t do this. Steve Denning wrote about this specifically in Forbes years ago:
The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/
Indeed, the very opposite of me to rush out dumped on an unsuspecting public.
great. Now hopefully that will motivate Apple to start offering useable amounts of RAM in base model Mac’s.
In that sense, and this is unquestionable, Apple is behind.
What's actually going on?
Given the various rumours and some comments from people here and other sources, Apple is scrambling to get something going.
From some comments, you might even think 'scrambling frantically' could be more appropriate.
Tim Cook has almost gone out of his way now to put AI into Apple's upcoming releases.
The first step was to not even say the words Artifical Intelligence. That was telling and commented on at the time. They went out of their way to not mention it at all and point instead to what has been present (everywhere) since 2017: machine learning. That wasn't a great idea.
Since then some progress has probably been made and now Tim can bring himself to at least say AI and even pick up on an analyst comment to plug what's coming. That is a huge change.
It's even entirely possible that the entire AVP presentation was brought forward as a means to pull attention away from all the talk of AI.
Even with a WWDC focus on AI the actual results still won't start to show up until year end.
In essence Gatorguy is correct.
It's looking very like a rush job to claim back some AI mindset because that is where the buzz has been for the last couple of years.
Trying to claim otherwise is silly.
Everyone is working with universities and open source but when you look at what has come to market over the last two years and the lack of any Apple offering the conclusion is clear.
AI, under any description you want to apply to it, has made huge strides for consumer and industry facing technologies with real (as opposed to 'hinted at') solutions.
The fallout has also been noteworthy for both the positive and negative aspects of what has arrived.
Apple's solutions, whatever they may be when they arrive, will also be potentially polemic.
Apple is basically sending a marketing message saying 'watch this space' while competitors have been actively filling that space with solutions for the last two years.
I'm sure Phil would love to dust off his '......., my ass!' line, but the last time he used it, it ended up backfiring on him with a product that 'innovated' Apple into a corner it stayed on for literally years.
Instead of that, I fully expect them to do what they did with 5G (where they were also behind). Keep pretty quiet and then basically make the keynote revolve around AI.
Creating an OS that the public actually wants to use appears to be infinitely more difficult than doing an "AI" program.
Anyone who has found it helpful has effectively won in their objectives.
They won't have issues with where the underlying data came from.
There is more to this than ChatGPT though. Much more.
Away from generative options, LLM's are being fed all manner of 'clean' data (no rights issues) to work on and are being used all over the place and the 'relative difficulty' of producing those solutions is very, very high.
Cost and compute requirements are extremely high.
More importantly though, the point of Apple being behind still stands.
Catching up is irrelevant. The point is the situation today.
The point is who is making money on AI 5 years from now. What new companies with exist at that time. What current Big Tech companies will have benefitted.
The barrier to entry in AI is minimal with enough financial backing, which, Apple certainly has in spades.