CNBC:

Ian Goodfellow, one of the top minds in artificial intelligence at Google, has joined Apple in a director role.

The hire comes as Apple increasingly strives to tap AI to boost its software and hardware. Last year Apple hired John Giannandrea, head of AI and search at Google, to supervise AI strategy.

What does Ian bring to the table?

Goodfellow is the father of an AI approach known as generative adversarial networks, or GANs. The approach draws on two networks, one known as a generative network and the other known as a discriminative network, and can be used to come up with unusual and creative outputs in the form of audio, video and text.

GAN systems have been used to generate “deepfake” fake media content.

I’m assuming the “deepfake” reference here is a red herring. But it does make me wonder how this tech will fit in with Apple’s AI pursuits.