Elon Musk, who has threatened to ban his employees and visitors from using Apple devices at the companies he runs, said in a June 10 article on X that he was no longer a fan of iPhone computers, iPad and Mac because it had security issues. whether Apple’s new partnership with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, will protect users’ personal data.
But the situation that pushed Musk — who is one of the richest men in the world, CEO of X, head of a startup developing a rival to ChatGPT called Grok and co-founder of OpenAI, a company he sued – could be more complicated than simple security concerns. Musk, who has a reputation for boasting, is now being called out by members of his social media fact-checking community, saying his claims are inaccurate and misleading.
And at least one security researcher said Musk’s security warning appears misguided, based on information Apple and OpenAi have shared so far about how privacy between their companies is handled.
Here’s what happened: On Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team took the stage at the company’s developer conference and announced the generative AI features they’ll be bringing to iPhone, iPad and Mac users in upcoming versions of Apple’s operating system software this fall. . The news included a deal giving Apple users access to OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT gen AI chatbot. Then Musk made his threat.
Elon Musk posted about Apple’s new AI features shortly after the WWDC event.
“If Apple integrates OpenAI at the operating system level, then Apple devices will be banned from my businesses.” Musk posted Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This is an unacceptable breach of security.”
He also said in his tweets that visitors to his companies, which include Tesla, where they will be stored. a Faraday cage.” Faraday cages are enclosures that protect everything placed inside them from electromagnetic fields.
What he didn’t offer was evidence to support his speculation about potential security risks. Instead, Musk, in a follow-up post on Monday, belittled Apple for striking a deal with an outside maker of a Large Language Model (LLM), which enables gen AI functionality. He also said he might make his own phone to “fight this”, again without detailing what it is.
“It is patently absurd that Apple is not smart enough to create its own AI, yet is able to guarantee that OpenAI will protect your security and privacy,” Musk wrote. “Apple has no idea what actually happens once they pass your data to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the line.”
Musk, who has worked to portray himself as an advocate for users and humanity, also hasn’t mentioned his legal issues with OpenAI, which are detailed in his February lawsuit. In that lawsuit, he claims the San Francisco-based startup, led by CEO Sam Altman, abandoned its founding mission to develop AI that will benefit humanity and instead focused on the pursuit of profit.
In response, OpenAI disputed Musk’s account in a lengthy blog post on its site on March 5, saying the billionaire investor was angry that his attempt to buy OpenAI in 2018 was rebuffed. This included Musk’s request to become CEO and majority shareholder so he could make it a “for-profit entity” himself. OpenAI’s post also referenced a few emails from Elon Musk that appeared to support the company’s claim that Musk was aware that OpenAI would have to become a for-profit company if it wanted to raise money to realize its dream to build artificial general intelligence (AGI). , an AI that equals or exceeds human intelligence. In 2017, Musk said in an email that OpenAI was expected to raise at least $1 billion in funding.
Musk withdrew his suit on Tuesday, “a day before a state judge in San Francisco ruled on its dismissal,” the New York Times reported, adding that he may file a new suit in another state. Musk’s lawyers did not give a reason for their request to dismiss the trial in their case, according to CNN.
OpenAI declined to comment on Musk’s comments about the partnership with Apple and his decision to drop his lawsuit.
Look at this: Apple Introduces Private Cloud Computing for AI Processing
For its part, Apple did not respond to CNET’s request for comment on how ChatGPT will be integrated into “Apple Intelligence,” the name it has given to its approach to adding generative features based on AI in its hardware and software. These features include the ability to rewrite or summarize notes as well as Siri’s improved ability to understand the context of conversations.
In its description of its deal with OpenAI, OpenAI said users could choose to access ChatGPT through Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, and in new writing tools that will proofread your writing, rewrite copies in different styles and will quickly summarize long sections of text. .
Apple also announced Monday that it plans to “add support for other AI models in the future.”
See also: Apple says its AI sets a ‘new standard’ for privacy, invites security experts to test it
During the WWDC keynote, Apple spoke at length about the security and privacy aspects of its AI systems, including what it calls Private Cloud Compute to manage communications between personal devices and remote servers of Apple working in the cloud. The iPhone maker has championed privacy as a core value when designing products and services, and said Apple Intelligence will set “a new standard for privacy in AI.” To achieve this, Apple said some AI-related tasks would be processed on the device, while more complex queries would be routed to the cloud in data centers running Apple-made chips. In both cases, “the data is neither stored nor made accessible to Apple and is only used to respond to user requests, and independent experts can verify this confidentiality,” the company said.
“Privacy protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT: their IP addresses are masked and OpenAI does not store requests,” Apple said in a press release.
The iPhone maker said it expects ChatGPT to be integrated into new software for its iPhone, iPad and Mac computers this fall (usually when it releases a new iPhone model.) Integration with ChatGPT is an optional feature, the company said, demonstrating that users can choose to register or use OpenAI’s chatbot on its website. Apple said its devices would not collect personal data, but would be aware of it.
Elon Musk’s AI company xAI is making progress in transforming its Grok chatbot into one with multimodal capabilities, according to public documents from the developers.
Since access to ChatGPT is an optional feature that users must opt-in to, it doesn’t appear that Apple is actually integrating OpenAI at the operating system level as Musk claims, according to Matthew Green, associate professor of computer science who teaches cryptography. at Johns Hopkins University.
“They say you have to explicitly do it and opt in and enable it,” Green said, citing information provided so far by Apple and OpenAi. “It seems like, first of all, no, they’re not integrating anything at the operating system level. They’re not making it any sort of default. They’re integrating an optional feature into Siri that you have to explicitly enable. this would allow you to use ChatGPT This doesn’t sound at all like what Elon Musk describes.
That said, Green said he and others will be watching for more details as the two companies share more details and get closer to Apple releasing its software.
Elon Musk called Apple Intelligence “scary” in several articles on X.
X fact-checkers also pointed out that Musk’s posts, calling the Apple-OpenAI partnership “creepy spyware,” were not factually accurate, Forbes noted. “Users, citing Apple’s own introduction to Apple Intelligence models, said Musk’s claim that the company would pass the data to OpenAI is misleading because Apple has developed its own AI systems that will run on the device or locally and will use private cloud computing.
In another community note, Forbes reported, fact-checkers wrote that Musk “distorts what was actually announced” because “Apple Intelligence is Apple’s own creation” and access to ChatGPT “is fully separated and controlled by the user.
Originally published June 11 at 3:33 a.m. PT.
Updated June 11 at 5:35 p.m. PT: Adds information about Musk’s ChatGPT rival, Grok, and the lawsuit against OpenAI.
Updated June 11 at 6:25 p.m. PT: Adds comment from security researcher, Musks decision to drop OpenAI lawsuit.
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