Apple to Conduct AI Summit this Month, its First In-Person Event in Three Years

Apple is starting to ease its policies regarding COVID as the pandemic restrictions all over the world begin to start easing too. This means that the company may return to its traditional media events, such as product launches, the Worldwide Developers Conference, and the annual internal AI Summit.

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TOPSHOT - Attendees gather for a product launch event at Apple's Steve Jobs Theater on September 12, 2018, in Cupertino, California. - New iPhones set to be unveiled Wednesday offer Apple a chance for fresh momentum in a sputtering smartphone market as the California tech giant moves into new products and services to diversify. Apple was expected to introduce three new iPhone models at its media event at its Cupertino campus, notably seeking to strengthen its position in the premium smartphone market a year after launching its $1,000 iPhone X.

Apple's AI Summit

For the past three years, Apple halted its in-person events because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, events have all been pre-recorded to avoid health risks. But it was reported that the company is now ready to go back to the traditional way of conducting events.

Apple will hold its annual AI Summit at the Steve Jobs Theater this month for its employees. As per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company will be holding live and in-person presentations at the theater located at Apple Park Way in Cupertino, California.

AI Summit is reported to have the same formats as those during the pre-COVID era. But the difference is that the upcoming AI Summit will be streamed online for other employees who will not be able to attend despite having in-person guests.

Since the event will be private for employees, it is hard to know what to expect from this event. But 9To5Mac reported that Apple has been adding AI machines and features to its devices. This year's Apple AI Summit comes in line with the rise of platforms like OpenAI and ChatGPT.

Aside from this, Apple is expected to announce its latest software at WWDC 2023. So we may get some leads during this event on further details regarding this news.

The Return of In-Person Events

The return of the AI Summit as Apple's first in-person event in the last three years means that there is a possibility that Apple brings back the events in a traditional way of letting in-person guests be invited to the headquarters.

Just last year, Apple recently invited a limited number of developers to its Worldwide Developers Conference and several members of the press for the iPhone 14 series launch event. Both events presented pre-recorded keynotes and presentations.

According to Apple Insider, the company also changed its corporate worker COVID-19 policy. This means that employees will not be required to get tested before entering the premises of the Apple offices and headquarters.

Last July 2022, Apple announced the return of employees to offices after years of remote work. But according to previous reports, employees were unhappy regarding this news as several advocacy groups filed petitions to instead focus on "location flexible work."

Some employees also resigned because of this newly implemented policy, including Apple Machine Learning Director Ian Goodfellow. He stated, "I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team."