Apple has announced that it will be giving developers access to its neural networks. Called Basic Neural Network Subroutines (BNNS), the system is described by the company as a collection of functions that developers can use to construct their own neural networks. Further, it is supported on OS X, iOS, tvOS, and watch OS, and is optimised for all CPUs supported on those platforms. The company also notes that developers won’t be able train the network via the API, but Apple has pre-trained it for certain tasks.
You can read the official documentation here.
It will be interesting to see how developers utilise this API in their applications, especially considering the range of supported devices. These steps should help the company advance in the field of artificial intelligence. Apple's move comes a few days after Google added support for iPhones and iPads to its TensorFlow neural network. This artificial intelligence program was instrumental in AlphaGo’s victory over Lee Seedol.