Apple Is Developing Tech So Users Can Control Devices With Only Their Thoughts
Apple is boldly embracing brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to enable users to control its devices using only their thoughts—a novel frontier for the company.
Earlier this week, it was announced that the tech giant is working with Synchron, a company that has been pioneering BCI research and work for more than a decade. The company was founded by Dr. Tom Oxley, a neurointerventionalist and technologist. Synchron has developed a stent-like implant that can be inserted using a (relatively) minimally invasive procedure on an individual's motor cortex. The stent was reportedly granted FDA clearance for human trials in 2021, and works to detect brain signals and translate them into software-enabled relays; in the case of an Apple device, the relays can select icons on a iPhone or iPad.
The video below shows a user's experience with Synchron's BCI in conjunction with the Apple Vision headset.
Apple is working to establish the standards for BCI devices and protocolize what their use could look like across its device landscape. The company is expected to open up the technology and protocols to third-party developers in short order.
Among the primary goals of BCI technology is to enable the millions of individuals worldwide that may have limited physical functions to use devices. For example, the World Health Organization reports that globally, over 15 million people are living with spinal cord injuries. Many of these individuals may experience some type of loss of physical or sensory functions over the course of their lifetimes.
This is where BCIs can truly make a difference—enabling individuals to control electronic devices purely with their thoughts. In fact, reports indicate that the BCI industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.35% from 2025 to 2030 and has huge potential to become a trillion dollar market within the next decade.
Undoubtedly, BCIs have become a popular topic of conversation in recent years, especially due to the significant amount of progress that has been made in the field. Notably, Elon Musk's Neuralink has been especially vocal about its immense success. The company is developing its own BCI technology stack with a visionary goal to 'create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.' Neuralink especially made waves when it released its 'Monkey MindPong' video (below), which showed a Macaque monkey playing the classic game of Pong and navigating the controller solely with its thoughts.
Given that Synchron's interface is a stent-like device, the company has developed a minimally invasive procedure for its insertion. Neuralink has developed its own surgical robot to be able to implant its device with precision. Unsurprisingly, these procedures are incredibly complex and require immense technical proficiency and medical expertise. Therefore, all of this work, despite the promising potential and results, is ultimately dependent on government approval and oversight, pending the clearance of numerous safety and reliability tests. Furthermore, a significant amount of work still needs to be done with regards to the long-term efficacy of this technology as well as its impacts on the physical body.
However, if done correctly, millions of individuals stand to potentially benefit from this revolutionary technology.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Tom's Guide
33 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
Image Playground on your iPhone is getting a major boost — thanks to ChatGPT
Last year, Apple unveiled Image Playground — a tool to turn your descriptions or people from your photo library into AI images. It was plagued with issues, complaints, and users feeling it was lagging behind the best AI image generators. But now Apple is bringing it back — with a little help. The company announced at WWDC 2025 it is integrating ChatGPT into Image Playground in order to turn things around. This should allow for better, more advanced AI image generation while using the software. Previously, Image Playground was limited to fairly generic emoji-style images. Now, through the integration of a ChatGPT setting, users can choose to generate an image in any art style or, they can drill down to oil painting, watercolour, vector, anime or print. Whenever a user tries to generate an image through Image Playground like this, Apple will send the request off to ChatGPT to generate the image. However, Apple has made it clear that it won't share any personal information with ChatGPT without the user's permission. Apple is making a clear effort to push Image Playground further. Not only does it have integration with ChatGPT, but the feature is being made more accessible throughout iOS. Users can generate unique images that fit a conversation in Messages and set that as their background. It can also be accessed through Apple's Shortcuts update. Apple Intelligence may be lagging behind its competition, but the company's deepening relationship with OpenAI could help make up ground. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Apple is making a clear effort to push Image Playground further. Apple announced it was bringing ChatGPT to Siri last year and has continued to cram ChatGPT features into a various parts of its apps, like Notes and Mail. This is a direction other companies have used successfully, piggy-backing on the success of the largest AI models to boost an ecosystem without having to produce a competitive AI model — something both expensive and time-consuming. The feature isn't quite here yet. ChatGPT integration in Apple Playground will launch alongside iOS 26, which is expected to drop in September alongside the iPhone 17 family. You can find the biggest announcements from WWDC 2025 here and, if you haven't seen it yet, check out our interview with Apple's Craig Fedreghi and Greg Joswiak discussing Apple Intelligence (among other things) below.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Divorcing SpaceX Just Isn't Possible Right Now
The public spat between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the world's richest person, was unsettling given the power these two men wield and how their verbal tussle quickly escalated to issues that directly affect national security. Trump floated the cancellation of all NASA and Department of Defense contracts with SpaceX, the space-launch and satellite-internet company Musk founded in 2002. Musk countered that he would withdraw the services of the Dragon space capsule, which is the only option now, except for resorting to the Russians, for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'Hockey stick of job growth' fueled by space, aerospace industries across Brevard
This story is part of America's Evolving Cities, a USA TODAY Network project that takes a close look at four regions across the country and their unique paths to success — and how residents have benefited or suffered along the way. Rather than die on the vine, high-tech space and aerospace industries have mushroomed and flourished across Florida's Space Coast — to magnitudes few could have predicted — since NASA mothballed the space shuttle program after Atlantis' final flight in July 2011. Think billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — the two richest men in the world — and their respective companies SpaceX and Blue Origin. And national defense contractors like L3Harris Technologies, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Viewed on a chart, Brevard County's annual aerospace-aviation workforce statistics show "a hockey stick of job growth" climbing upward in recent years, said Mike Miller, Space Florida vice president of external affairs, speaking during an April 22 Melbourne Regional Chamber presentation. Example: Brevard County's workforce in that sector practically doubled during the brief span from 2017 (7,847 workers) to 2023 (14,828 workers), Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast records show. And SpaceX is delivering a mammoth program now under construction: The gargantuan Starship-Super Heavy rocket system is coming to NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Economists expect at least $1.8 billion in projected capital investment and 600 new full-time jobs by 2030. 'It's a very exciting time, just as it was back in the '50s and the '60s,' said Robert Taylor, a Florida Institute of Technology history professor. 'Someday, when Americans actually make the trip back to the moon — or the ultimate trip to Mars — they'll start right here in Brevard County," Taylor said. Aside from SpaceX, EDC officials provided a list of Brevard's anchor corporate investments since the end of the shuttle program, nearly 14 years ago: ⬤ Blue Origin. In a 2015 move hailed by economic development officials as a shift "from a shuttle shutdown to a commercial space rebirth," Bezo's private company announced it would build a rocket manufacturing facility on the Space Coast. Fast forward to today. Blue Origin has invested more than $3 billion in facilities in Florida and employs more than 3,000 workers in the state, primarily on the Space Coast. The company's ever-growing rocket factory on Merritt Island sprawls across more than 230 acres, building massive New Glenn two-stage rockets. Former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe told FLORIDA TODAY this "unbelievable" complex is one of the biggest construction infrastructure efforts at the Cape since the 1960s. ⬤ L3Harris Technologies. In 2015, Melbourne-based Harris Corp., which partnered with NASA on space projects for decades, acquired Exelis Inc., a global aerospace company based in McLean, Virginia, in a $4.75 billion deal. That same year, Harris Corp. opened the six-story, 450,000-square-foot Harris Technology Center in Palm Bay to house about 1,400 employees. And in 2019, the company merged with L3 Technologies to form L3Harris Technologies, America's sixth-largest defense company. Today, L3Harris ranks as Brevard County's third-largest employer, trailing only Health First and Brevard Public Schools. In 2023, the defense-contracting giant completed its $4.7 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne. ⬤ Northrop Grumman. Major expansion started two years after Atlantis' final flight at the company's ever-growing campus at Melbourne Orlando International Airport. That's where engineers developed the U.S. Air Force's B-21 Raider long-range stealth bomber, which is under production and testing in California. Northrop Grumman's Melbourne campus employs about 5,000 workers, including contract employees, across 2 million square feet of office, labs and manufacturing space. The building count jumped from six to 17 between 2016 and 2022. And work is underway on another 38-acre, multi-phase expansion complex on airport-owned property along NASA Boulevard for about 1,200 employees. ⬤ Lockheed Martin. Back in 2005, the defense contractor announced it would retain 1,000 jobs by keeping the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Unit at Port Canaveral, the EDC reported. By 2017, the company moved its Fleet Ballistic Missile headquarters from Sunnyvale, California, to Titusville, bringing in 350 new jobs. In 2021, Lockheed Martin opened its Spacecraft Test, Assembly and Resource (STAR) Center in Titusville to expand manufacturing, assembly and testing for NASA's Orion spacecraft program. And in January, the firm announced plans to build a $140-million advanced manufacturing facility in Titusville supporting the U.S. Navy's next-generation Trident II D5 LE2 ballistic missile program. This expansion is projected to open in 2027 and generate up to 300 new jobs with average salaries of $89,000. ⬤ Embraer. Since 2008, Embraer has announced four development phases creating its first North American business-jet-building campus at the Melbourne airport, generating more than 1,000 jobs and capital investments topping $155 million. The Brazilian company operates business jet production facilities, a global customer center and its first U.S.-based engineering and technology center here. Embraer's Phenom 100EV and the Phenom 300E, which can carry up to 11 passengers and crew — are built "nose to tail" in Melbourne. Alongside Embraer, Lynda Weatherman, EDC president and CEO, pointed to Lockheed's Orion spacecraft program as leading a "paradigm shift" in Brevard's aerospace-aviation sector. She said the EDC led the aggressive effort to land Orion. "For the first time in 50 years of history of space in the state of Florida, we're assembling a launch vehicle. Ever. And people need to see that and understand: That was the paradigm shift," she said. Illustrating that point, Weatherman cited Dassault Falcon Jet's new $115 million maintenance complex under construction at Melbourne Orlando International Airport, which will service corporate aircraft from the U.S. East Coast, Mexico and Latin America. The first aircraft should arrive in July. Space Florida President and CEO Rob Long said those developments helped spur continuing accelerated growth. Just the past two years, he said Space Florida-backed projects added more than 1,500 jobs and $2.7 billion of investment on Space Coast — generating roughly $750 million in economic impact. Back in 2011, the year Atlantis flew for the final time, the Space Coast hosted 10 orbital rocket launches carrying about 95,334 pounds of payload into orbit, Space Florida statistics show. Civil agencies like NASA and NOAA accounted for six of those missions, while the other four launches were for the Department of Defense. Fast forward to last year. A record-shattering 93 launches lifted more than 2.74 million pounds of payload into orbit — a whopping 29-fold increase. SpaceX rockets accounted for 88 of last year's 93 missions, while United Launch Alliance rockets launched the remaining five. 'The (rocket) launch is exciting to see. And it's in many ways a visual metaphor of what's happening here, if you think about it," Weatherman said. Sarah Beaudin, a Northrop Grumman systems engineering director, has worked for the defense contractor for 22 years. She moved from Southern California to central Brevard in 2018, and she serves as technical chief on the U.S. Navy E-2D Advanced Hawkeye radar-dome aircraft program. Beaudin said she enjoys Brevard's easy accessibility, particularly to the beaches, and she and her daughter picked up birdwatching as a hobby. How has the Space Coast changed since she arrived? "The growth. There has been a lot of growth. I live right off Pineda Causeway. When I bought my house, it was a dead end on the other side of (Interstate) 95. Now, there's Costco and lots and lots of houses — and more being built," she said. Space Launch Delta 45 now projects 107 rockets will launch during 2025. Looking ahead, Federal Aviation Administration officials are collecting public comment on SpaceX's proposal to boost Falcon rocket launches up to 120 per year just from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. "It really used to be an event when the shuttle went off, and people would line the roads and they'd watch the shuttle go up. Night launches were particularly spectacular. But today, it seems like it's not so much an event ... sometimes, it seems daily there's rockets going up," Florida Historical Society Executive Director Ben Brotemarkle said. "The future looks bright for the space program. And there's certainly continued growth that you can see today in Brevard County. It never ceases to amaze me driving down the roads," Brotemarkle said. For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@ Twitter/X: @RickNeale1 Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here. This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Rockets, aerospace growth take off in Brevard in NASA post-shuttle era
