Apple cancels preexisting military drone Pentagon contract after acquiring AI company

Less than three weeks after quietly acquiring artificial intelligence company Xnor.ai, Apple has swiftly canceled the company’s preexisting contract with the Pentagon that would have seen its tech used in the controversial “Project Maven” military drone operation. That’s according to a report from The Information, citing a person familiar with the matter. Project Maven is the Pentagon’s initiative to use artificial intelligence to identify objects and targets of interest in aerial footage captured by military drones. The project has been highly controversial due to the potential for AI to presumably identify and label potential targets. Thousands of employees at Google staged protests last year over the company’s contracts for Project Maven. Those protests ultimately lead to Google withdrawing from the contract.