The IT Nerd

I swear, this will be fun to watch.

You might recall that Elon Musk went absolutely insane on Twitter after the Apple Intelligence announcement because of the involvement of OpenAI. As part of that he was saying things that at first glance do not seem to be true. Well, OpenAI has decided to return fire via Fortune Magazine:

A top OpenAI executive defended her company against Elon Musk, a day after the billionaire CEO described the integration of OpenAI’s chatbot technology into Apple iPhones as “creepy spyware.”

“That’s his opinion. Obviously I don’t think so,” Mira Murati, chief technology officer at OpenAI, said on stage at Fortune’s MPW dinner in San Francisco on Tuesday. “We care deeply about the privacy of our users and the safety of our products.”

And:

In her answers on Tuesday, Murati hammered home the idea that OpenAI is intensely focused on user privacy and security. “We’re trying to be as transparent as possible with the public,” she said, adding that “the biggest risk is that stakeholders misunderstand the technology.”

I seriously think that this has less to do about what Apple and OpenAI are doing, along with user safety, and more to do with the fact that Elon isn’t involved. Or he’s afraid that this will destroy his Grok AI because of the scale of Apple and Open AI. So he’s being as mature as a two year old as a result. Although I will concede this point. By Murati saying that “We’re trying to be as transparent as possible with the public” does leave some room for doubt. Another thing to point out is that using OpenAI’s ChatGPT4 is a choice. As in every time Apple Intelligence feels that the query would benefit from using ChatGPT4, it will ask you. And Apple Intelligence removes user identifiable data from any query involving ChatGPT4. Which means that Elon’s rants aren’t valid. Thus it might be in everyone’s interest to ignore Elon .

On Monday at WWDC, Apple announced Apple Intelligence which is Apple’s spin on AI. You can read the marketing fluff here. But if you want a FAQ that will answer all your questions, this should help you. But the bottom line is that it’s supposed to be truly useful while being truly private. In fact Apple spent a lot of time talking about the privacy aspects of Apple Intelligence and how the company is open to having people verify its claims. To get another perspective on this, Kevin Surace, Chair, Token & “Father of the Virtual Assistant” had this to say:

Apple has taken a “privacy and security first” approach to handling all generative AI interactions that must be processed in the cloud. No one else comes close at this point, and no one else has spelled out with full transparency how they intend to meet that high bar. More information can be found here: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/.

Note that, at least for now, this is for Apple hardware product users who must trust that what they say to the AI is private to them and can never be stolen or learned from. It’s possible that some enterprises will evaluate the strength of this and allow their employees to use Apple devices with Apple Intelligence without fear.

Apple didn’t exactly state what silicon they used here. Is it a custom GPU cluster they designed or their own M4 processors, which include a neural engine and substantial GPU resources? But in typical Apple fashion, they have vertically integrated everything and taken ownership of its security from top to bottom. It’s impressive and ahead of AWS, Microsoft, and Google cloud offerings for LLMs thus far, even if it is just in support of Apple Intelligence features.

Apple has set the bar for absolute privacy and security of generative AI interactions. Everyone else will need to scramble now to meet this bar. This may allow enterprises to trust the Apple infrastructure for routine Apple Intelligence interactions, even those that include some corporate data.

Apple has developed its own foundation models that are very impressive but don’t yet beat out GPT-4. They publish their comparisons here: https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/introducing-apple-foundation-models. While Apple has not said what its partnership with OpenAI entails, they hint that when GPT-4 (or GPT-5 perhaps) is required for more accuracy, they will use it. To ensure absolute privacy, they would need to host it themselves in their Private Cloud Compute. They didn’t state that yesterday, so I suspect that the ink is still drying on those agreements with details to be worked out. But bouncing out to GPT-4 anytime won’t work. They suggested there would be an opt-in to that, so perhaps users give up some privacy when they opt to use GPT-4. How safe is OpenAI? They do provide various levels of private operation, but no one really knows how safe, secure, and non-sharing it actually is. While Apple has published an extensive security white paper, OpenAI has a short ChatGPT Enterprise privacy note, which certainly isn’t convincing Elon Musk it’s safe.

Apple has set the bar for absolute privacy and security of generative AI interactions. This may allow enterprises to trust the Apple infrastructure for routine Apple Intelligence interactions, even those that include some corporate data. This is a world-class effort, one where they are inviting security experts to poke holes in their approach. I’d say it appears as rock solid as anything we have seen.

All data to the cloud is encrypted, so a simple man-in-the-middle attack won’t work. From what they are saying, one would have to break into their network, but they don’t even have any debugging tools enabled in runtime—no privileged runtime access. They even took major precautions against actual physical access (basically breaking into the data center). They state that they have made this so secure and so encrypted with no storage of your information that it isn’t a target. I’d say this is state-of-the-art from the silicon to the outer doors of the facility.

Apple is stating that they are using their own foundation models in the network and the devices. That’s first and foremost. Then they note a partnership with OpenAI, to be used only when required, and they will also use the best of breed models. They seem to be hedging their bets here. OpenAI is a bit of a black box. But I suspect either Apple will host it themselves or demand a very private instance for their users, and users have to opt-in to its use. They failed to give us more details on the partnership, so time will tell, but it’s clear Apple takes privacy and security seriously, and they realize the hesitancy when they mention OpenAI. My bet is they will do this right, and it won’t be an issue.

While I don’t trust any company completely, I trust Apple more than I trust most companies. Thus I will be taking a dive into the Apple Intelligence pool when it comes out. If it improves Siri, that alone would be worth it. But in all seriousness, the privacy first approach is a win in my mind for users.

From the “what drugs is this guy smoking” department comes a tweet storm from Elon Musk in regards to Apple integrating OpenAI’s Chat GPT 4 into their operating systems that are due to be released this fall. The TL:DR is that he’s so upset by this that he’s threatening to ban iPhones and other Apple devices from his companies:

Elon Musk is threatening to ban iPhones from all his companies over the newly announced OpenAI integrations Apple announced at WWDC 2024 on Monday. In a series of posts on X, the Tesla, SpaceX and xAI exec wrote that “if Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level,” Apple devices would be banned from his businesses and visitors would have to check their Apple devices at the door where they’ll be “stored in a Faraday cage.”

His posts seem to misunderstand the relationship Apple announced with OpenAI or at least attempt to leave room for doubt about user privacy. While Apple and OpenAI both said that users are asked before “any questions are sent to ChatGPT,” along with any documents or photos, Musk’s responses indicate he believes OpenAI is deeply integrated into Apple’s operating system itself and therefore able to hoover up any personal and private data.

In iOS 18, Apple said people will be able to ask Siri questions, and if the assistant thinks ChatGPT can help, it will ask permission to share the question and present the answer directly. This allows users to get an answer from ChatGPT without having to open the ChatGPT iOS app. Photos, PDFs or other documents you want to send to ChatGPT get the same treatment.

Musk, however, would prefer that OpenAI’s capabilities remain bound to a dedicated app — not a Siri integration.

Responding to VC and CTO Sam Pullara at Sutter Hill Ventures who wrote that the user is approving a specific request on a per-request basis — OpenAI does not have access to the device — Musk wrote, “Then leave it as an app. This is bullshit.”

Pullara had said that the way ChatGPT was integrated was essentially the same way the ChatGPT app works today. The on-device AI models are either Apple’s own or those using Apple’s Private Cloud.

Meanwhile, replying to a post on X from YouTuber Marques Brownlee that further explained Apple Intelligence, Musk responded, “Apple using the words ‘protect your privacy’ while handing your data over to a third-party AI that they don’t understand and can’t themselves create is *not* protecting privacy at all!”

He even replied to a post by Apple CEO Tim Cook, wherein he threatened to ban Apple devices from the premises of his companies if he didn’t “stop this creepy spyware.”

“It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!” Musk exclaimed in one of many posts about the new integrations. “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river,” he said. While it’s true that Apple may not know the inner workings of OpenAI, it’s not technically Apple handing over the data — the user is making that choice, from the sound of things.

I have a feeling that this is all a smokescreen for the fact that Apple is working with OpenAI and not with him and his Grok AI. I say that because Apple during the WWDC keynote where this was announced did say that it was open to integrating other AI’s, and that OpenAI was the first one. And I am going to guess that his AI isn’t on Apple list. So he’s having a tantrum and throwing his toys out of the stroller like a two year old. Which is typical for Elon as he seems to have the emotional maturity of a two year old. My advice is to completely ignore Elon as clearly he’s lost the plot here.