[HN Gopher] Apple buys Israeli startup Q.ai
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Apple buys Israeli startup Q.ai
https://www.reuters.com/business/apple-acquires-audio-ai-sta...
Author : ishener
Score : 70 points
Date : 2026-01-29 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| bnchrch wrote:
| 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.
| alighter wrote:
| This. And next word prediction / autocorrect that doesn't look
| like it's from the previous century.
| tobmlt wrote:
| On both my nokia and my blackberry it was far far better than
| on my iphone. That wasn't quite 199X but pretty close.
|
| I wish the iphone had word prediction and autocorrect that
| was from the previous centruy
| thewebguyd wrote:
| BlackBerry's keyboards & autocorrect were top notch.
| Nothing has matched it yet when using a pure virtual touch
| screen keyboard.
|
| Crazy he had pretty much perfected the tech of typing out
| text on a smartphone and then decided to throw it all away
| by moving to all-screen devices instead. A virtual keyboard
| with no tactile feel will never compare until we can have
| screens that can recreate the tactile bumps of a physical
| keyboard.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Apple autocorrect has gotten actually worse over the last
| decade. Before it used to be duck instead of a similar
| sounding word and it took one action to correct it. Now it's
| just fuschia and it takes 5 mins to correct the correction to
| the autocorrect.
| tartoran wrote:
| I agree with this sentiment. It was so annoying that I
| turned auto correct off. I found that writing on iPhone has
| got worse as well, or at least it's my own observation. On
| the other hand, voice dictation has improved quite a bit
| that I can just dictate into my phone when needed. For more
| serious work I use a work device not a consumption one.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| that already made the news. it will be powered by gemini and
| may launch before next wwdc.
| assaddayinh wrote:
| 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 ..
| clueless wrote:
| 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"
|
| Yep, looks like that is it. Recent patent from one of the
| founders:
| https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
| mikestorrent wrote:
| Yeah...
|
| Pardon the AI crap, but:
|
| > ...in most people, when they "talk to themselves" in their
| mind (inner speech or internal monologue), there is typically
| subtle, miniature activation of the voice-related muscles --
| especially in the larynx (vocal cords/folds), tongue, lips, and
| sometimes jaw or chin area. These movements are usually
| extremely small -- often called subvocal or sub-articulatory
| activity -- and almost nobody can feel or see them without
| sensitive equipment. They do not produce any audible sound (no
| air is pushed through to vibrate the vocal folds enough for
| sound). Key evidence comes from decades of research using
| electromyography (EMG), which records tiny electrical signals
| from muscles: EMG studies consistently show increased activity
| in laryngeal (voice box) muscles, tongue, and lip/chin areas
| during inner speech, silent reading, mental arithmetic,
| thinking in words, or other verbal thinking tasks
|
| So, how long until my Airpods can read my mind?
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| I subtlely move my mouth when I'm thinking to myself. I never
| knew I did it until it was pointed out to me.
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| Sounds pretty invasive for privacy, if this was ever paired with
| smart glasses in public.
| Lammy wrote:
| Hence the name, I assume.
| tchalla wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Twice, well done!
| tartoran wrote:
| What kind of tech does qAi bring to the table?
| stefanos82 wrote:
| Why am I having a feeling that one of their reasons was so they
| can trademark "iQ", to match the iSomething "franchise", so to
| speak?
| gralab wrote:
| Apple dropped the "i" naming scheme many years ago.
| Sir_Twist wrote:
| "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.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/05/apple-smart-home-hub-20...
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