At the early morning of June 11 (Tuesday) Beijing time, Apple launched Apple Intelligence at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 24) and announced that it would cooperate with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the next generation of iOS, iPadOS and macOS. The high attention paid to privacy has made Apple's ecosystem closed in most cases, but the integration of the third-party large model ChatGPT has been questioned by some users, including Tesla founder Musk.
Musk sent out a series of tweets on the X platform, accusing Apple of "selling user data" and threatening to ban its companies from using iPhones. Musk posted, "If Apple integrates OpenAI at the operating system level, then Apple devices will be banned from my company. This is an unacceptable security violation. Visitors' Apple devices must be inspected at the door and then stored in a Faraday shield," he added.
Image source: X
Cybersecurity expert Li Tiejun said in an interview with the Daily Economic News, "You cannot control whether a third-party platform will use user data to train its large model, and OpenAI's ChatGPT is a third-party platform for Apple."
“User consent will be obtained every time ChatGPT is enabled”
The reporter from the China Business Network noticed that after Musk's questioning tweet was sent out, some media pointed out that Musk completely misinterpreted Apple's intentions.
According to Apple, when the ChatGPT feature is enabled in iOS 18, it will be optional and user consent will be obtained each time it is enabled. When ChatGPT is disabled, it will send queries to Apple servers of Apple LLM powered by Apple Silicon, and all content will be end-to-end encrypted. If ChatGPT is enabled, the user will be asked whether to forward the text to ChatGPT.
Apple shows “Siri asks if it can send queries to ChatGPT”
What data is sent to ChatGPT depends entirely on the specific circumstances. However, it is never sent without the user's consent, and only the data required for the query is sent. Images, text, or search queries sent to ChatGPT do not include identifiers and are discarded after the results are generated and sent to the user. Even if Apple and ChatGPT "lie and conspire" to collect user data, the data they obtain is only the data that the user actively chooses to send. This is not significantly different from installing the ChatGPT app on an iPhone.
When Musk posted a series of posts on the X platform, accusing Apple of "selling user data", many people pointed out that "user consent is required to enable ChatGPT", but Musk did not seem to buy it.
“Users decide whether to approve or deny ChatGPT based on a request from an Apple device, which OpenAI does not have access to,” wrote Sam Pullara, venture capitalist and CTO of Sutter Hill Ventures.
Musk insisted, “Apple is not smart enough to develop its own artificial intelligence (AI), but it thinks it can ensure that OpenAI protects your security and privacy. This is obviously ridiculous! Once your data is handed over to OpenAI, Apple has no idea what is happening. They are selling you out.”
In this regard, network security expert Li Tiejun told the reporter of Daily Economic News that in fact, some domestic technology companies have clear regulations prohibiting the uploading of commercial files to foreign large models. "Because you can't control whether these third-party platforms will use user data to train their large models. I guess this is also the reason why Musk is angry. OpenAI's ChatGPT is a third-party platform for Apple." He explained.
Why is Musk unhappy about Apple’s partnership with OpenAI?
A reporter from the Daily Economic News noticed that both Apple and OpenAI had conflicts with Musk.
After acquiring Twitter (now X platform) in 2022, Musk tweeted a message "blasting" Apple, saying that Apple had basically stopped advertising on Twitter and that Apple also threatened to remove Twitter from its app store. In the end, he met with Cook and resolved the issue, saying that they had a "good conversation" and "resolved the misunderstanding."
As one of the former founders of OpenAI, the conflict between Musk and OpenAI broke out in March this year. At that time, Musk filed a lawsuit in the San Francisco Superior Court, suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for breach of contract.
Musk sued OpenAI and Altman because he believed that Altman and OpenAI violated an agreement reached when the AI research company was founded - to develop technology for the benefit of humanity, not for profit. ChatGPT, released in March 2023, marked a major departure from OpenAI's principles. GPT-4 is a closed-source model, which violates the spirit of open source. This move was made for commercial purposes, not for the benefit of humanity.
Musk has filed charges against OpenAI, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices, and has demanded that the company resume open source. Musk has since posted on X, asking OpenAI to change its name to ClosedAI so that he can withdraw the lawsuit. In July 2023, Musk's xAI was officially established, and he said that it "will definitely compete with OpenAI." Recently, xAI has just announced that it has received $6 billion in financing.
Li Tiejun added to the reporter from Meijing that the previous conflict with OpenAI made Musk distrust OpenAI, so Apple's integration of ChatGPT in iOS18 made him even more angry.
The reason why Apple is relatively slow in the AI race among major technology companies is mainly due to privacy considerations, which was mentioned many times at the WWDC conference. Previously, Canalys released a report pointing out that consumer interest is constrained by privacy and data security issues. Therefore, transparency and corporate responsibility are crucial when designing and implementing AI functions.
In response, Apple said that its artificial intelligence functions will be processed on the device to ensure the privacy of information. For AI functions that need to call the cloud, a "private cloud" will be used, and the data will never be stored on the server. Apple also said that the data will never be accessible, and it will invite independent experts to verify whether Apple's statement is true.
This article comes from the WeChat public account "Daily Economic News" (ID: nbdnews) , author: Cai Ding, and is authorized to be published by 36Kr.
