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.

I'm using Xcode 26 Beta 5 and get errors on any generation I try, however harmless, when wrapped in the #Playground macro. #Playground { let session = LanguageModelSession() let topic = "pandas" let prompt = "Write a safe and respectful story about (topic)." let response = try await session.respond(to: prompt) Not seeing any issues on simulator or device. Anyone else seeing this or have any ideas? Thanks for any help! Version 26.0 beta 5 (17A5295f) macOS 26.0 Beta (25A5316i)

Hardware: Macbook Pro M4 Nov 2024 Software: macOS Tahoe 26.0 & xcode 26.0 Apple Intelligence is activated and the Image playground macOS app works Running the following on xcode throws ImagePlayground.ImageCreator.Error.creationFailed Any suggestions on how to make this work? import Foundation import ImagePlayground Task { let creator = try await ImageCreator() guard let style = creator.availableStyles.first else { print("No styles available") exit(1) } let images = creator.images( for: [.text("A cat wearing mittens.")], style: style, limit: 1) for try await image in images { print("Generated image: \(image)") } exit(0) } RunLoop.main.run()

Hi everyone, I’m currently exploring the use of Foundation models on Apple platforms to build a chatbot-style assistant within an app. While the integration part is straightforward using the new FoundationModel APIs, I’m trying to figure out how to control the assistant’s responses more tightly — particularly: Ensuring the assistant adheres to a specific tone, context, or domain (e.g. hospitality, healthcare, etc.) Preventing hallucinations or unrelated outputs Constraining responses based on app-specific rules, structured data, or recent interactions I’ve experimented with prompt, systemMessage, and few-shot examples to steer outputs, but even with carefully generated prompts, the model occasionally produces incorrect or out-of-scope responses. Additionally, when using multiple tools, I'm unsure how best to structure the setup so the model can select the correct pathway/tool and respond appropriately. Is there a recommended approach to guiding the model's decision-making when several tools or structured contexts are involved? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts or being pointed toward related WWDC sessions, Apple docs, or sample projects.

I have a question. In China, long pressing a picture in the album can segment the target. Is this model a local model? Is there any information? Can developers use it?

Hello, I've been dealing with a puzzling issue for some time now, and I’m hoping someone here might have insights or suggestions. The Problem: We’re observing an occasional crash in our app that seems to originate from the Vision framework. Frequency: It happens randomly, after many successful executions of the same code, hard to tell how long the app was working, but in some cases app could run for like a month without any issues. Devices: The issue doesn't seem device-dependent (we’ve seen it on various iPad models). OS Versions: The crashes started occurring with iOS 18.0.1 and are still present in 18.1 and 18.1.1. What I suspected: The crash logs point to a potential data race within the Vision framework. The relevant section of the code where the crash happens: guard let cgImage = image.cgImage else { throw ... } let request = VNCoreMLRequest(model: visionModel) try VNImageRequestHandler(cgImage: cgImage).perform([request]) // <- the line causing the crash Since the code is rather simple, I'm not sure what else there could be missing here. The images sent here are uniform (fixed size). Model is loaded and working, the crash occurs random after a period of time and the call worked correctly many times. Also, the model variable is not an optional. Here is the crash log: libobjc.A objc_exception_throw CoreFoundation -[NSMutableArray removeObjectsAtIndexes:] Vision -[VNWeakTypeWrapperCollection _enumerateObjectsDroppingWeakZeroedObjects:usingBlock:] Vision -[VNWeakTypeWrapperCollection addObject:droppingWeakZeroedObjects:] Vision -[VNSession initWithCachingBehavior:] Vision -[VNCoreMLTransformer initWithOptions:model:error:] Vision -[VNCoreMLRequest internalPerformRevision:inContext:error:] Vision -[VNRequest performInContext:error:] Vision -[VNRequestPerformer _performOrderedRequests:inContext:error:] Vision -[VNRequestPerformer _performRequests:onBehalfOfRequest:inContext:error:] Vision -[VNImageRequestHandler performRequests:gatheredForensics:error:] OurApp ModelWrapper.perform And I'm a bit lost at this point, I've tried everything I could image so far. I've tried to putting a symbolic breakpoint in the removeObjectsAtIndexes to check if some library (e.g. crash reporter) we use didn't do some implementation swap. There was none, and if anything did some method swizzling, I'd expect that to show in the stack trace before the original code would be called. I did peek into the previous functions and I've noticed a lock used in one of the Vision methods, so in my understanding any data race in this code shouldn't be possible at all. I've also put breakpoints in the NSLock variants, to check for swizzling/override with a category and possibly messing the locking - again, nothing was there. There is also another model that is running on a separate queue, but after seeing the line with the locking in the debugger, it doesn't seem to me like this could cause a problem, at least not in this specific spot. Is there something I'm missing here, or something I'm doing wrong? Thanks in advance for your help!

I am using a contact tool to help get contact from my address book. but the model ins't invoking my tool call method. Even tried with a simple tool the outcome is the same my simple tool is not being invoked.

I have integrated Apple’s Foundation Model into my iOS application. As known, Foundation Model is only supported starting from iOS 26 on compatible devices. To maintain compatibility with older iOS versions, I wrapped the API calls with the condition if #available(iOS 26, *). The application works normally on an iPad running iOS 18 and on a Mac running macOS 26. However, when running the same build on a MacBook Air M1 (macOS 15) through iPad app compatibility, the app crashes immediately upon launch. The main issue is that I cannot debug directly on macOS 15, since the app can only be built on macOS 26 with Xcode beta. I then have to distribute it via TestFlight and download it on the MacBook Air M1 for testing. This makes identifying the detailed cause of the crash very difficult and time-consuming. Nevertheless, I have confirmed that the crash is caused by the Foundation Model APIs.

I generate an array of random floats using the code shown below. However, I would like to do this with Double instead of Float. Are there any BNNS random number generators for double values, something like BNNSRandomFillUniformDouble? If not, is there a way I can convert BNNSNDArrayDescriptor from float to double? import Accelerate let n = 100_000_000 let result = Array<Float>(unsafeUninitializedCapacity: n) { buffer, initCount in var descriptor = BNNSNDArrayDescriptor(data: buffer, shape: .vector(n))! let randomGenerator = BNNSCreateRandomGenerator(BNNSRandomGeneratorMethodAES_CTR, nil) BNNSRandomFillUniformFloat(randomGenerator, &descriptor, 0, 1) initCount = n }

Hey, When generating responses with structured output and non-streaming API, it sometimes takes 3s, sometimes 10-20s. I am firing that request subsequently while testing the app. Is this by design, or any place I can learn more about what contributes to such variation?

I am experimenting with Foundation Models in my time tracking app to analyze users tracked events, but I am finding that the model struggles with even basic computation of time. Specifically converting from seconds to hours and minutes. To give just one example, when I prompt: "Convert 3672 seconds to hours, minutes, and seconds. Don't include the calculations in the resulting output" I get this: "3672 seconds is equal to 1 hour, 0 minutes, and 36 seconds". Which is clearly wrong - it should be 1 hour, 1 minute, and 12 seconds. Another issue that I saw a lot is that seconds were considered to be minutes, or that the hours were just completely off. What can I do to make the support for math better? Or is that just something that the model is not meant to be used for?

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 }

Hey Tried using a few regular expressions and all fail with an error: Unhandled error streaming response: A generation guide with an unsupported pattern was used. Is there are a list of supported features? I don't see it in docs, and it takes RegExp. Anything with e.g. [A-Z] fails.

I am calling into an app extension from a Safari Web Extension (sendNativeMessage, which in turn results in a call to NSExtensionRequestHandling’s beginRequest). My Safari extension aims to make use of the new foundation models for some of the features it provides. In my testing, I hit the rate limit by sending 4 requests, waiting 30 seconds between each. This makes the FoundationModels framework (which would otherwise serve my use case perfectly well) unusable in this context, because the model is called in response to user input, and this rate of user input is perfectly plausible in a real world scenario. The error thrown as a result of the rate limit is “Safety guardrail was triggered after consecutive failures during streaming.", but looking at the system logs in Console.app shows the rate limit as the real culprit. My suggestions: Please introduce sensible rate limits for app extensions, through an entitlement if need be. If it is rate limited to 1 request per every couple of seconds, that would already fix the issue for me. Please document the rate limit. Please make the thrown error reflect that it is the result of a rate limit and not a generic guardrail violation. IMPORTANT: please indicate in the thrown error when it is safe to try again. Filed a feedback here: FB18332004

When I use ChatGPT in Xcode, the following error is displayed： It was working fine before, but suddenly it became like this, without changing any configuration. Why?

Hello. I am willing to hire game developer for cards game called baloot. My question is Can the developer implement an AI when the computer is playing and the computer on the same time the conputer improves his rises level without any interaction? 🌹

Hello, My app fully relies on the new Foundation Models. Since Foundation Models require Apple Intelligence, I want to ensure that only devices capable of running Apple Intelligence can install my app. When checking the UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities property for a suitable value, I found that iphone-performance-gaming-tier seems the closest match. Based on my research: On iPhone, this effectively limits installation to iPhone 15 Pro or later. On iPad, it ensures M1 or newer devices. This exactly matches the hardware requirements for Apple Intelligence. However, after setting iphone-performance-gaming-tier, I noticed that on iPad, Game Mode (Game Overlay) is automatically activated, and my app is treated as a game. My questions are: Is there a more appropriate UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities value that would enforce the same Apple Intelligence hardware requirements without triggering Game Mode? If not, is there another way to restrict installation to devices meeting Apple Intelligence requirements? Is there a way to prevent Game Mode from appearing for my app while still using this capability restriction? Thanks in advance for your help.

I've spent way too long today trying to convert an Object Detection TensorFlow2 model to a CoreML object classifier (with bounding boxes, labels and probability score) The 'SSD MobileNet v2 320x320' is here: https://github.com/tensorflow/models/blob/master/research/object_detection/g3doc/tf2_detection_zoo.md And I've been following all sorts of posts and ChatGPT https://apple.github.io/coremltools/docs-guides/source/tensorflow-2.html#convert-a-tensorflow-concrete-function https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10153/?time=402 To convert it. I keep hitting the same errors though, mostly around: NotImplementedError: Expected model format: [SavedModel | concrete_function | tf.keras.Model | .h5 | GraphDef], got <ConcreteFunction signature_wrapper(input_tensor) at 0x366B87790> I've had varying success including missing output labels/predictions. But I simply want to create the CoreML model with all the right inputs and outputs (including correct names) as detailed in the docs here: https://github.com/tensorflow/models/blob/master/research/object_detection/g3doc/running_on_mobile_tf2.md It goes without saying I don't have much (any) experience with this stuff including Python so the whole thing's been a bit of a headache. If anyone is able to help that would be great. FWIW I'm not attached to any one specific model, but what I do need at minimum is a CoreML model that can detect objects (has to at least include lights and lamps) within a live video image, detecting where in the image the object is. The simplest script I have looks like this: import coremltools as ct import tensorflow as tf model = tf.saved_model.load("~/tf_models/ssd_mobilenet_v2_320x320_coco17_tpu-8/saved_model") concrete_func = model.signatures[tf.saved_model.DEFAULT_SERVING_SIGNATURE_DEF_KEY] mlmodel = ct.convert( concrete_func, source="tensorflow", inputs=[ct.TensorType(shape=(1, 320, 320, 3))] ) mlmodel.save("YourModel.mlpackage", save_format="mlpackage")

I'm adding Visual Intelligence support to my app, and now want to add a Tip using TipKit to guide users to this feature from within my app. I want to add a Rule to my Tip which will only show this Tip on devices where Visual Intelligence is supported (ex. not iPhone 14 Pro Max). What is the best way for me to determine availability to set this TipKit rule? Here's the documentation I'm following for Visual Intelligence: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/visualintelligence/integrating-your-app-with-visual-intelligence

Hi everyone, I'm trying to use VNDetectTextRectanglesRequest to detect text rectangles in an image. Here's my current code: guard let cgImage = image.cgImage(forProposedRect: nil, context: nil, hints: nil) else { return } let textDetectionRequest = VNDetectTextRectanglesRequest { request, error in if let error = error { print("Text detection error: \(error)") return } guard let observations = request.results as? [VNTextObservation] else { print("No text rectangles detected.") return } print("Detected \(observations.count) text rectangles.") for observation in observations { print(observation.boundingBox) } } textDetectionRequest.revision = VNDetectTextRectanglesRequestRevision1 textDetectionRequest.reportCharacterBoxes = true let handler = VNImageRequestHandler(cgImage: cgImage, orientation: .up, options: [:]) do { try handler.perform([textDetectionRequest]) } catch { print("Vision request error: \(error)") } The request completes without error, but no text rectangles are detected — the observations array is empty (count = 0). Here's a sample image I'm testing with: I expected VNTextObservation results, but I'm not getting any. Is there something I'm missing in how this API works? Or could it be a limitation of this request or revision? Thanks for any help!

Lookin for J - is this a safe place for discussing full apps ive built but not submitted or shared , I have maybe over 100 but had been unaware any assistance was provided.. is there a formal process to take to submit an app fro review to improve OS, other than during App Store review.