It's still unclear what Apple plans to do with Turi, but a Bloomberg source said its machine-learning technology could give Siri new ways to interact with people. Since company also uses AI to recommend songs and apps, predict words you're about to type and to recognize images, among other things, it could do a lot more than improve Apple's voice assistant.

The source added that the acquisition would enable Apple to connect with the growing community of AI researchers, as well. Unlike the tech titan, which is very tight-lipped when it comes to the products it's developing, Turi has a better relationship with third-party researchers. It even held a machine-learning conference for data scientists in July.