Report: Apple interested in startup that runs giant AI models on iPhone without servers

Oh, wonderful. Apple, the trillion-dollar walled garden, is now sniffing around PrismML, a startup claiming to run a 27-billion-parameter AI model on an iPhone without servers. Because nothing says 'privacy-first' like giving every app the ability to process your data locally—so Apple can market 'on-device intelligence' while you bake your hands on a power-sucking chip. The model goes open-source on July 14, handing the keys to the very surveillance economy Tim Cook loves to decry.

A 27B parameter model on a device with passive cooling—what could possibly go wrong? PrismML's wizardry reportedly compresses the model without losing accuracy, which is about as believable as Apple's promise that the next iOS update will finally fix the keyboard lag.

But let's not be cynical: this is clearly about user privacy, not about Apple keeping control of the AI pipeline while pretending to be a virtue signaler. The meetings happened, the deal might close, and soon your iPhone will be a supercomputer that can't play a YouTube video without throttling. Welcome to the future: more compute, less battery, and Siri still can't set a timer. Cheers.