At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for Machine Learning and AI Frameworks. What are you most excited about in the Foundation Models framework? The Foundation Models framework provides access to an on-device Large Language Model (LLM), enabling entirely on-device processing for intelligent features. This allows you to build features such as personalized search suggestions and dynamic NPC generation in games. The combination of guided generation and streaming capabilities is particularly exciting for creating delightful animations and features with reliable output. The seamless integration with SwiftUI and the new design material Liquid Glass is also a major advantage. When should I still bring my own LLM via CoreML? It's generally recommended to first explore Apple's built-in system models and APIs, including the Foundation Models framework, as they are highly optimized for Apple devices and cover a wide range of use cases. However, Core ML is still valuable if you need more control or choice over the specific model being deployed, such as customizing existing system models or augmenting prompts. Core ML provides the tools to get these models on-device, but you are responsible for model distribution and updates. Should I migrate PyTorch code to MLX? MLX is an open-source, general-purpose machine learning framework designed for Apple Silicon from the ground up. It offers a familiar API, similar to PyTorch, and supports C, C++, Python, and Swift. MLX emphasizes unified memory, a key feature of Apple Silicon hardware, which can improve performance. It's recommended to try MLX and see if its programming model and features better suit your application's needs. MLX shines when working with state-of-the-art, larger models. Can I test Foundation Models in Xcode simulator or device? Yes, you can use the Xcode simulator to test Foundation Models use cases. However, your Mac must be running macOS Tahoe. You can test on a physical iPhone running iOS 18 by connecting it to your Mac and running Playgrounds or live previews directly on the device. Which on-device models will be supported? any open source models? The Foundation Models framework currently supports Apple's first-party models only. This allows for platform-wide optimizations, improving battery life and reducing latency. While Core ML can be used to integrate open-source models, it's generally recommended to first explore the built-in system models and APIs provided by Apple, including those in the Vision, Natural Language, and Speech frameworks, as they are highly optimized for Apple devices. For frontier models, MLX can run very large models. How often will the Foundational Model be updated? How do we test for stability when the model is updated? The Foundation Model will be updated in sync with operating system updates. You can test your app against new model versions during the beta period by downloading the beta OS and running your app. It is highly recommended to create an "eval set" of golden prompts and responses to evaluate the performance of your features as the model changes or as you tweak your prompts. Report any unsatisfactory or satisfactory cases using Feedback Assistant. Which on-device model/API can I use to extract text data from images such as: nutrition labels, ingredient lists, cashier receipts, etc? Thank you. The Vision framework offers the RecognizeDocumentRequest which is specifically designed for these use cases. It not only recognizes text in images but also provides the structure of the document, such as rows in a receipt or the layout of a nutrition label. It can also identify data like phone numbers, addresses, and prices. What is the context window for the model? What are max tokens in and max tokens out? The context window for the Foundation Model is 4,096 tokens. The split between input and output tokens is flexible. For example, if you input 4,000 tokens, you'll have 96 tokens remaining for the output. The API takes in text, converting it to tokens under the hood. When estimating token count, a good rule of thumb is 3-4 characters per token for languages like English, and 1 character per token for languages like Japanese or Chinese. Handle potential errors gracefully by asking for shorter prompts or starting a new session if the token limit is exceeded. Is there a rate limit for Foundation Models API that is limited by power or temperature condition on the iPhone? Yes, there are rate limits, particularly when your app is in the background. A budget is allocated for background app usage, but exceeding it will result in rate-limiting errors. In the foreground, there is no rate limit unless the device is under heavy load (e.g., camera open, game mode). The system dynamically balances performance, battery life, and thermal conditions, which can affect the token throughput. Use appropriate quality of service settings for your tasks (e.g., background priority for background work) to help the system manage resources effectively. Do the foundation models support languages other than English? Yes, the on-device Foundation Model is multilingual and supports all languages supported by Apple Intelligence. To get the model to output in a specific language, prompt it with instructions indicating the user's preferred language using the locale API (e.g., "The user's preferred language is en-US"). Putting the instructions in English, but then putting the user prompt in the desired output language is a recommended practice. Are larger server-based models available through Foundation Models? No, the Foundation Models API currently only provides access to the on-device Large Language Model at the core of Apple Intelligence. It does not support server-side models. On-device models are preferred for privacy and for performance reasons. Is it possible to run Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using the Foundation Models framework? Yes, it is possible to run RAG on-device, but the Foundation Models framework does not include a built-in embedding model. You'll need to use a separate database to store vectors and implement nearest neighbor or cosine distance searches. The Natural Language framework offers simple word and sentence embeddings that can be used. Consider using a combination of Foundation Models and Core ML, using Core ML for your embedding model.

Hey everyone, I want to add an if statement that would do something along the lines of this: if confidence = 100% { } How could I do this? I already have a createML model. Thank you, Oliver

When I ran the following code on a physical iPhone device that supports Apple Intelligence, I encountered the following error log. What does this internal error code mean? Image generation failed with NSError in a different domain: Error Domain=ImagePlaygroundInternal.ImageGeneration.GenerationError Code=11 “(null)”, returning a generic error instead let imageCreator = try await ImageCreator() let style = imageCreator.availableStyles.first ?? .animation let stream = imageCreator.images(for: [.text("cat")], style: style, limit: 1) for try await result in stream { // error: ImagePlayground.ImageCreator.Error.creationFailed _ = result.cgImage }

Does your app store/platform support AI apps is there any difference in the submission to review process for AI apps vs non AI apps Can you share any documentation supporting the above

Attempting to set up ComfyUI-CoreMLSuite on my Mac Studio. ComfyUI starts but no Core nodes are in the add-node-list. cloned both ComfyUI-CoreMLSuite and ml-stable-diffusion into custom_nodes and bounced the ComfyUI server. The startup complains that ml-stable-diffusion has no init.py. FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ... /ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ml-stable-diffusion/init.py' It appears to be a show stopper. What to do?

I click Join the Apple Intelligence Waitlist and chose Join Waitlist, but no show Joined list

Hi We're on tensorflow 2.20 that has support now for python 3.13 (finally!). tensorflow-metal is still only supporting 2.18 which is over a year old. When can we expect to see support in tensorflow-metal for tf 2.20 (or later!) ? I bought a mac thinking I would be able to get great performance from the M processors but here I am using my CPU for my ML projects. If it's taking so long to release it, why not open source it so the community can keep it more up to date? cheers Matt

Hello, I am currently developing an application that requires barcode scanning using Apple’s Vision framework (VNBarcodeSymbology). I noticed that the framework supports several GS1 DataBar symbologies, such as: VNBarcodeSymbology.gs1DataBar VNBarcodeSymbology.gs1DataBarExpanded VNBarcodeSymbology.gs1DataBarLimited However, I could not find any explicit reference to support for GS1 DataBar Stacked (both regular and expanded variants). Could you confirm whether GS1 DataBar Stacked is currently supported in VisionKit's DataScannerViewController or VNBarcodeObservation? If not, are there any plans to include support for this symbology in a future iOS update? This functionality is critical for my use case, as GS1 DataBar Stacked barcodes are widely used in retail, pharmaceuticals, and logistics, where space constraints prevent the use of standard GS1 DataBar formats. I appreciate any clarification on this matter and would be happy to provide additional details if needed.

I have been on the Bata 18.2 since it launched and I can not seem to get the playground keeps saying I’ve requested. Why! Please help

I would like to explore the option of restricting system prompts to share information with ChatGPT on my company's laptops. Is this possible, and if so, how can it be implemented? Should this be centralized, or should each user handle it individually?

I'm implementing an App Intent for my iOS app that helps users plan trip activities. It only works when run as a shortcut but not using voice through Siri. There are 2 issues: The ShortcutsTripEntity will only accept a voice input for a specific trip but not others. I'm stuck with a throwing error when trying to use requestDisambiguation() on the activity day @Parameter property. How do I rectify these issues. This is blocking me from completing a critical feature that lets users quickly plan activities through Siri and Shortcuts. Expected behavior for trip input: The intent should make Siri accept the spoken trip input from any of the options. Actual behavior for trip input: Siri only accepts the same trip when spoken but accepts any when selected by click/touch. Expected behavior for day input: Siri should accept the spoken selected option. Actual behavior for day input: Siri only accepts an input by click/touch but yet throws an error at runtime I'm happy to provide more code. But here's the relevant code: struct PlanActivityTestIntent: AppIntent { @Parameter(title: "Activity Day") var activityDay: ShortcutsItineraryDayEntity @Parameter( title: "Trip", description: "The trip to plan an activity for", default: ShortcutsTripEntity(id: UUID().uuidString, title: "Untitled trip"), requestValueDialog: "Which trip would you like to add an activity to?" ) var tripEntity: ShortcutsTripEntity @Parameter(title: "Activity Title", description: "The title of the activity", requestValueDialog: "What do you want to do or see?") var title: String @Parameter(title: "Activity Day", description: "Activity Day", default: ShortcutsItineraryDayEntity(itineraryDay: .init(itineraryId: UUID(), date: .now), timeZoneIdentifier: "UTC")) var activityDay: ShortcutsItineraryDayEntity func perform() async throws -> some ProvidesDialog { // ...other code... let tripsStore = TripsStore() // load trips and map them to entities try? await tripsStore.getTrips() let tripsAsEntities = tripsStore.trips.map { trip in let id = trip.id ?? UUID() let title = trip.title return ShortcutsTripEntity(id: id.uuidString, title: title, trip: trip) } // Ask user to select a trip. This line would doesn't accept a voice // answer. Why? let selectedTrip = try await $tripEntity.requestDisambiguation( among: tripsAsEntities, dialog: .init( full: "Which of the \(tripsAsEntities.count) trip would you like to add an activity to?", supporting: "Select a trip", systemImageName: "safari.fill" ) ) // This line throws an error let selectedDay = try await $activityDay.requestDisambiguation( among: daysAsEntities, dialog:"Which day would you like to plan an activity for?" ) } } Here are some related images that might help:

In an under-development MacOS & iOS app, I need to identify various measurements from OCR'ed text: length, weight, counts per inch, area, percentage. The unit type (e.g. UnitLength) needs to be identified as well as the measurement's unit (e.g. .inches) in order to convert the measurement to the app's internal standard (e.g. centimetres), the value of which is stored the relevant CoreData entity. The use of NLTagger and NLTokenizer is problematic because of the various representations of the measurements: e.g. "50g.", "50 g", "50 grams", "1 3/4 oz." Currently, I use a bespoke algorithm based on String contains and step-wise evaluation of characters, which is reasonably accurate but requires frequent updating as further representations are detected. I'm aware of the Python SpaCy model being capable of NER Measurement recognition, but am reluctant to incorporate a Python-based solution into a production app. (ref [https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/30092]) My preference is for an open-source NER Measurement model that can be used as, or converted to, some form of a Swift compatible Machine Learning model. Does anyone know of such a model?

I am writing a custom package wrapping Foundation Models which provides a chain-of-thought with intermittent self-evaluation among other things. At first I was designing this package with the command line in mind, but after seeing how well it augments the models and makes them more intelligent I wanted to try and build a SwiftUI wrapper around the package. When I started I was using synchronous generation rather than streaming, but to give the best user experience (as I've seen in the WWDC sessions) it is necessary to provide constant feedback to the user that something is happening. I have created a super simplified example of my setup so it's easier to understand. First, there is the Reasoning conversation item, which can be converted to an XML representation which is then fed back into the model (I've found XML works best for structured input) public typealias ConversationContext = XMLDocument extension ConversationContext { public func toPlainText() -> String { return xmlString(options: [.nodePrettyPrint]) } } /// Represents a reasoning item in a conversation, which includes a title and reasoning content. /// Reasoning items are used to provide detailed explanations or justifications for certain decisions or responses within a conversation. @Generable(description: "A reasoning item in a conversation, containing content and a title.") struct ConversationReasoningItem: ConversationItem { @Guide(description: "The content of the reasoning item, which is your thinking process or explanation") public var reasoningContent: String @Guide(description: "A short summary of the reasoning content, digestible in an interface.") public var title: String @Guide(description: "Indicates whether reasoning is complete") public var done: Bool } extension ConversationReasoningItem: ConversationContextProvider { public func toContext() -> ConversationContext { // <ReasoningItem title="${title}"> // ${reasoningContent} // </ReasoningItem> let root = XMLElement(name: "ReasoningItem") root.addAttribute(XMLNode.attribute(withName: "title", stringValue: title) as! XMLNode) root.stringValue = reasoningContent return ConversationContext(rootElement: root) } } Then there is the generator, which creates a reasoning item from a user query and previously generated items: struct ReasoningItemGenerator { var instructions: String { """ <omitted for brevity> """ } func generate(from input: (String, [ConversationReasoningItem])) async throws -> sending LanguageModelSession.ResponseStream<ConversationReasoningItem> { let session = LanguageModelSession(instructions: instructions) // build the context for the reasoning item out of the user's query and the previous reasoning items let userQuery = "User's query: \(input.0)" let reasoningItemsText = input.1.map { $0.toContext().toPlainText() }.joined(separator: "\n") let context = userQuery + "\n" + reasoningItemsText let reasoningItemResponse = try await session.streamResponse( to: context, generating: ConversationReasoningItem.self) return reasoningItemResponse } } I'm not sure if returning LanguageModelSession.ResponseStream<ConversationReasoningItem> is the right move, I am just trying to imitate what session.streamResponse returns. Then there is the orchestrator, which I can't figure out. It receives the streamed ConversationReasoningItems from the Generator and is responsible for streaming those to SwiftUI later and also for evaluating each reasoning item after it is complete to see if it needs to be regenerated (to keep the model on-track). I want the users of the orchestrator to receive partially generated reasoning items as they are being generated by the generator. Later, when they finish, if the evaluation passes, the item is kept, but if it fails, the reasoning item should be removed from the stream before a new one is generated. So in-flight reasoning items should be outputted aggresively. I really am having trouble figuring this out so if someone with more knowledge about asynchronous stuff in Swift, or- even better- someone who has worked on the Foundation Models framework could point me in the right direction, that would be awesome!

I'm trying to build llama.cpp, a popular tool for running LLMs locally on macos15.1.1 (24B91) Sonoma using cmake but am encountering errors. Here is the stack overflow post regarding the issue: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79304015/cmake-unable-to-find-foundation-framework-on-macos-15-1-1-24b91?noredirect=1#comment139853319_79304015

I'm implementing an LLM with Metal Performance Shader Graph, but encountered a very strange behavior, occasionally, the model will report an error message as this: LLVM ERROR: SmallVector unable to grow. Requested capacity (9223372036854775808) is larger than maximum value for size type (4294967295) and crash, the stack backtrace screenshot is attached. Note that 5th frame is mlir::getIntValues<long long> and 6th frame is llvm::SmallVectorBase<unsigned int>::grow_pod It looks like mlir mistakenly took a 64 bit value for a 32 bit type. Unfortunately, I could not found the source code of mlir::getIntValues, maybe it's Apple's closed source fork of llvm for MPS implementation? Anyway, any opinion or suggestion on that?

Hi all, I'm trying to find out if/when we can expect mxfp8/mxfp4 support on Apple Silicon. I've noticed that mlx now has casting data types, but all computation is still done in bf16. Would be great to reduce power consumption with support for these lower precision data types since edge inference is already typically done at a lower precision! Thanks in advance.

Hello, I have a question regarding hybrid execution for deep learning models on Apple's Neural Engine and CPU. I am aware that setting the precision of some layers to 32-bit allows hybrid execution across both the Neural Engine and the CPU. However, I would like to know if it is possible to achieve the same with 16-bit precision. Is there any specific configuration or workaround to enable hybrid execution in this case? Any guidance or documentation references would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I tried this: struct CarShortcutsProvider: AppShortcutsProvider { @AppShortcutsBuilder static var appShortcuts: [AppShortcut] { AppShortcut( intent: LockCarIntent(), phrases: ["Lock my car with \(.applicationName)", "Lock my \(\.$car) with \(.applicationName)"], shortTitle: LocalizedStringResource("Lock Car"), systemImageName: "lock.fill" ) AppShortcut( intent: UnlockCarIntent(), phrases: ["Unlock my car with \(.applicationName)", "Unlock my \(\.$car) with \(.applicationName)"], shortTitle: LocalizedStringResource("Unlock Car"), systemImageName: "lock.open.fill" ) } } but Siri only understands "unlock my car ", not with the placeholder. Siri asks me then for the car, and it understands it, but not in one sentence. Is there something wrong with my code? Also I tried it without applicationName first, and then it didn't work at all with Siri. Is this a general limitation of app intents? I thought the goal was to reduce friction. If the user has to mention the app name all the time, it adds friction.

I'm developing a tennis ball tracking feature using Vision Framework in Swift, specifically utilizing VNDetectedObjectObservation and VNTrackObjectRequest. Occasionally (but not always), I receive the following runtime error: Failed to perform SequenceRequest: Error Domain=com.apple.Vision Code=9 "Internal error: unexpected tracked object bounding box size" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Internal error: unexpected tracked object bounding box size} From my investigation, I suspect the issue arises when the bounding box from the initial observation (VNDetectedObjectObservation) is too small. However, Apple's documentation doesn't clearly define the minimum bounding box size that's considered valid by VNTrackObjectRequest. Could someone clarify: What is the minimum acceptable bounding box width and height (normalized) that Vision Framework's VNTrackObjectRequest expects? Is there any recommended practice or official guidance for bounding box size validation before creating a tracking request? This information would be extremely helpful to reliably avoid this internal error. Thank you!

We are really excited to have introduced the Foundation Models framework in WWDC25. When using the framework, you might have feedback about how it can better fit your use cases. Starting in macOS/iOS 26 Beta 4, the best way to provide feedback is to use #Playground in Xcode. To do so: In Xcode, create a playground using #Playground. Fore more information, see Running code snippets using the playground macro. Reproduce the issue by setting up a session and generating a response with your prompt. In the canvas on the right, click the thumbs-up icon to the right of the response. Follow the instructions on the pop-up window and submit your feedback by clicking Share with Apple. Another way to provide your feedback is to file a feedback report with relevant details. Specific to the Foundation Models framework, it’s super important to add the following information in your report: Language model feedback This feedback contains the session transcript, including the instructions, the prompts, the responses, etc. Without that, we can’t reason the model’s behavior, and hence can hardly take any action. Use logFeedbackAttachment(sentiment:issues:desiredOutput: ) to retrieve the feedback data of your current model session, as shown in the usage example, write the data into a file, and then attach the file to your feedback report. If you believe what you’d report is related to the system configuration, please capture a sysdiagnose and attach it to your feedback report as well. The framework is still new. Your actionable feedback helps us evolve the framework quickly, and we appreciate that. Thanks, The Foundation Models framework team

Hi, I am new to developing on Apple’s platform yet I want to familiarize myself with Core ML and Core ML Tools. I was watching the WWDC24: Bring your machine learning and AI models to Apple Silicon video and was trying to follow along. After multiple attempts and much reading up on documentation, I am still unable to get a coherent script running that will convert the Mistral model that the host used and convert it to a valid Core ML model. here is a pastebin to what i have currently: https://pastebin.com/04cVjF1v if you require the output as well please let me know