Apple(US:AAPL) Huan Qiu Wang Zi Xun·2025-07-23 03:14Core Viewpoint - Apple is experiencing internal conflicts regarding its artificial intelligence (AI) open-source strategy, which has led to significant team departures and highlights deeper contradictions in its AI strategy [1][4]. Group 1: Internal Disagreements - The AI foundational model team proposed an open-source initiative to attract external collaboration and showcase technological capabilities, but this was rejected by Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering [1][4]. - Federighi's rejection of the open-source plan has been linked to the departure of key personnel within the AI team, indicating dissatisfaction with the company's "device-first" strategy that limits technological advancement [4][5]. Group 2: Technical Concerns - The AI team had developed a preliminary open-source roadmap, prioritizing the release of a lightweight language model called "Ajax LLM," which is optimized for mobile devices and reduces parameter size by 90% while tripling inference speed [4]. - Federighi expressed concerns that open-sourcing would reveal proprietary model compression algorithms, potentially allowing competitors to replicate Apple's optimization strategies and undermine the AI differentiation of iPhones [4]. Group 3: Future Developments - Apple plans to introduce a new version of Siri, referred to as Siri 2.0, in the iPhone 18 series, which will be based on an upgraded Ajax LLM model [5]. - There are reports of a secret "hybrid AI" project within Apple, aiming to balance performance and privacy by processing simple tasks locally on iPhones while offloading complex tasks to private cloud servers, which could provide a compromise to the open-source debate [5].