Apple, Microsoft and Google are announcing a new era for what they describe as artificially intelligent smartphones and computers. The devices, they say, will automate tasks like editing photos and wishing a friend happy birthday.
But for this to work, these companies need something from you: more data.
In this new paradigm, your Windows computer will take a screenshot of everything you do every few seconds. An iPhone will gather information from many apps you use. And an Android phone can listen to a call in real time to alert you of a scam.
Is this information you are willing to share?
This change has important implications for our privacy. To deliver the new tailored services, businesses and their devices need more persistent and intimate access to our data than before. In the past, the way we used apps and retrieved files and photos on phones and computers was relatively siloed. Security experts say AI needs the big picture to connect the dots between what we do in apps, websites and communications.
“Do I feel safe giving this information to this company?” » Cliff Steinhauer, director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a cybersecurity nonprofit, spoke about companies’ AI strategies.
This is all happening because OpenAI’s ChatGPT shook up the tech industry almost two years ago. Apple, Google, Microsoft and others have since overhauled their product strategies, investing billions in new services under the umbrella term AI. They are convinced that this new type of computer interface, which constantly studies what you are doing to offer help, will become indispensable.
The biggest potential security risk from this change, experts say, comes from a subtle change in how our new devices work. Because AI can automate complex actions, like removing unwanted objects from a photo, it sometimes requires more computing power than our phones can handle. This means that more of our personal data may have to leave our phones to be processed elsewhere.
The information is transmitted to what is called the cloud, a network of servers that process requests. Once the information reaches the cloud, it can be seen by others, including company employees, bad actors, and government agencies. And while some of our data has always been stored in the cloud, our most personal and intimate data, once reserved for our eyes (photos, messages and emails), can now be connected and analyzed by a company on its servers.
Tech companies say they have gone to great lengths to secure people’s data.
For now, it is important to understand what will happen to our information when we use AI tools. So I got more information from companies about their data practices and interviewed security experts. I plan to wait to see if the technologies work well enough before deciding if it’s worth sharing my data.
Here’s what you need to know.
Apple Intelligence
Apple recently announced Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI services and its first major entry into the AI race.
The new AI services will be integrated into the fastest iPhones, iPads and Macs starting this fall. People will be able to use it to automatically remove unwanted objects from photos, create summaries of web articles, and write replies to text messages and emails. Apple is also revamping its voice assistant, Siri, to make it more conversational and give it access to data from all apps.
At Apple’s conference this month, where Apple Intelligence was demonstrated, Craig Federighi, the company’s senior vice president of software engineering, explained how it could work: Mr. Federighi said retrieved an email from a colleague asking him to reschedule a meeting, but he was supposed to see a play that evening starring his daughter. His phone then displayed his calendar, a document with details about the room, and a maps app to predict whether he would be late to the room if he agreed to a meeting later.
Apple said it was working to process most AI data directly on its phones and computers, which would prevent others, including Apple, from having access to the information. But for tasks that need to be transmitted to servers, Apple said it has developed protection measures, including scrambling the data through encryption and immediately deleting it.
Apple has also put measures in place to prevent its employees from having access to the data, the company said. Apple also said it would allow security researchers to audit its technology to ensure it delivers on its promises.
But Apple doesn’t know exactly what new Siri requests might be sent to the company’s servers, said Matthew Green, a security researcher and associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University who was briefed by Apple on its new technology. Anything that leaves your device is inherently less secure, he said.
Microsoft’s AI laptops
Microsoft is bringing AI to laptops the old-fashioned way.
Last week, the company began rolling out Windows computers called Copilot+ PC, which start at $1,000. The computers contain a new type of chip and other hardware that Microsoft says will keep your data private and secure. PCs can generate images and rewrite documents, among other new AI-powered features.
The company also launched Recall, a new system that lets users quickly find documents and files they’ve worked on, emails they’ve read, or websites they’ve visited. Microsoft compares Recall to a photographic memory built into your PC.
To use it, you can enter simple sentences, such as “I’m thinking about a video call I had with Joe recently while he was holding an ‘I Love New York’ coffee mug.” The computer will then retrieve the video call recording containing these details.
To do this, Recall takes screenshots every five seconds of what the user is doing on the machine and compiles those images into a searchable database. Snapshots are stored and analyzed directly on the PC, so the data is not reviewed by Microsoft or used to improve its AI, the company said.
Still, security researchers have warned of potential risks, explaining that the data could easily reveal everything you typed or viewed if hacked. In response, Microsoft, which had planned to roll out Recall last week, postponed its release indefinitely.
The PCs are equipped with Microsoft’s new Windows 11 operating system. It has several layers of security, said David Weston, a company security executive.
Google AI
Google also announced a suite of AI services last month.
One of its biggest revelations was a new AI-powered scam detector for phone calls. The tool listens to phone calls in real time, and if the caller looks like a potential scammer (for example, if they ask for a bank PIN), the company notifies you. Google said people should enable the scam detector, which is managed entirely by the phone. This means that Google will not listen to calls.
Google announced another feature, Ask Photos, which requires information to be sent to the company’s servers. Users can ask questions like “When did my daughter learn to swim?” » to bring up the first images of their child swimming.
Google said its employees may, in rare cases, review Ask Photos conversations and photo data to address abuse or harm, and that the information could also be used to help improve its Photos app. In other words, your question and the photo of your child swimming could be used to help other parents find images of their children swimming.
Google said its cloud is locked down with security technologies such as encryption and protocols to limit employee access to data.
“Our approach to privacy applies to our AI features, whether they are enabled on the device or in the cloud,” said Suzanne Frey, head of trust and privacy at Google, in a press release.
But Mr. Green, the security researcher, said Google’s approach to AI privacy seemed relatively opaque.
“I don’t like the idea of my very personal photos and my very personal research being sent to a cloud that is not under my control,” he said.