Wake me up when they let one of these acqui-hires update Siri to be on par with a voice assistant I could make in an afternoon with off the shelf tools.
The ability to impress CEOs and signal hotness to investors, may not corelate at all with the ability to produce breakthrough technology. Thus companies like google grow up unbought to then become ..
Could Q.ai be commercializing the AlterEgo tech coming out of MIT Lab?
i.e. "detects faint neuromuscular signals in the face and throat when a person internally verbalizes words"
If this works well, then I could finally see that AI wearable pins could be socially feasible. IMO speaking aloud in public to AI doesn't seem like something which will work but it is also what OpenAI is apparently investing a lot into with their hardware ambition with Jony Ive [0].
> Notably, this is the second time CEO Aviad Maizels has sold a company to Apple. In 2013, he sold PrimeSense, a 3D-sensing company that played a key role in Apple’s transition from fingerprint sensors to facial recognition on iPhones.
Q.ai launched in 2022 and is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Gradient Ventures, and others. Its founding team, including Maizels and co-founders Yonatan Wexler and Avi Barliya, will join Apple as part of the acquisition.
“Q.ai is a startup developing a technology to analyze facial expressions and other ways for communication.”
This is an interesting acquisition given their rumored Echo Show / Nest Hub competitor (1). Maybe this is part of their (albeit flawed and delayed) attempt to revitalize the Siri branding under their Apple Intelligence marketing. When you have to say the exact right words to Siri, or else she will add “Meeting at 10” as an all day calendar event, people get frustrated, and that non-technical illusion of the “digital assistant” is lost. If this is the model of understanding Apple have of their customers’ perception of Siri, then maybe their thinking is that giving Siri more non-verbal personable capability could be a differentiating factor in the smart hub market, along with the LLM rebuild. I could also see this tying into some sort of strategy for the Vision Pro.
Now, whether this hypothetical differentiating factor is worth $2 billion, I’m not so sure on, but I guess time will tell.
It's kind of sad watching Apple drift into irrelevancy. I know I'm not going to buy more products from them because nothing they have is worth the premium price.
In case there are any Ender's Game fans here, the capability to understand micro-expressions reminds me of how Ender subvocalizes to Jane. Orson Scott Card predicted yet another technological norm.
Intel went through a phase in the 2010’s of buying gobs of companies with fancy tech and utterly failing to integrate those acquisitions.
And even more fundamental, Intel rested on its laurels of having good hardware and got bit hard in the end. Something similar seems to be happening at Apple.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 30.8 ms ] threadYep, looks like that is it. Recent patent from one of the founders: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/openai-to...
Twice, well done!
This is an interesting acquisition given their rumored Echo Show / Nest Hub competitor (1). Maybe this is part of their (albeit flawed and delayed) attempt to revitalize the Siri branding under their Apple Intelligence marketing. When you have to say the exact right words to Siri, or else she will add “Meeting at 10” as an all day calendar event, people get frustrated, and that non-technical illusion of the “digital assistant” is lost. If this is the model of understanding Apple have of their customers’ perception of Siri, then maybe their thinking is that giving Siri more non-verbal personable capability could be a differentiating factor in the smart hub market, along with the LLM rebuild. I could also see this tying into some sort of strategy for the Vision Pro.
Now, whether this hypothetical differentiating factor is worth $2 billion, I’m not so sure on, but I guess time will tell.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/05/apple-smart-home-hub-20...
...how is this not at the top of the page?
Intel went through a phase in the 2010’s of buying gobs of companies with fancy tech and utterly failing to integrate those acquisitions.
And even more fundamental, Intel rested on its laurels of having good hardware and got bit hard in the end. Something similar seems to be happening at Apple.