As part of its WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple finally revealed its plans for artificial intelligence. It announced an Apple Intelligence feature that will be implemented in its popular operating systems later this fall.
However, the idea of expanding artificial intelligence has not been met with unanimous agreement. Immediately after the announcement, a certain vocal voice took to X (formerly Twitter) to voice his concerns – Elon Musk. And he was pretty tough.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, among others, is particularly concerned about the announced partnership between Apple and OpenAI: “If Apple integrates OpenAI at the operating system level, then Apple devices will be banned in my companies. This is an unacceptable breach of security.”
Later, he added that this policy would also be enforced on visitors: “Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.” He made this announcement not only on his personal X account but also under the A post shared by the CEO of Apple Tim Cook.
“It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to create their own AI, yet is somehow able to guarantee that OpenAI will protect your security and privacy! Apple has no idea what’s really going on once they hand over your data to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river ,” Musk added.
His last comment was later verified by X’s Community Comments feature. Users clarified that Apple actually built its own models, and the more demanding queries would be sent to the Private Cloud Compute platform it developed in-house.
Using the words “protect your privacy” while handing over your data to a 3rd party AI they don’t understand and can’t create themselves is *not* protecting privacy at all!
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2024
Actually, Musk was challenged afterwards From tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee who claims to have spoken directly with Tim Cook: “He said that at no point does Apple send any of your data to OpenAI without explicit user permission.” The user is always asked if they want to send a specific query to ChatGPT if it is expected to do a better job than the built-in Apple AI features.
It didn’t take long for someone in Musk’s camp to come up with the X Phone idea, similar to the people who asked Tesla to make its own Tesla Phone in the past. The user-proposed phone concept will include a partnership with Samsung, an open-source, privacy-focused X OS, and will include optimization and integration of all services available in Musk’s portfolio of companies, from X to Neuralink.
“It’s out of the question,” Musk responded to the idea. However, as has been the case in the past, these ideas remain fan wishful thinking – for now.