While some industry experts still flag the numerous ethical questions that pepper AI technology’s story, the wheels of commerce only roll forward. Apple had long been one of the major Big Tech companies that was reluctant to hop on the AI bandwagon, perhaps due to the privacy concerns of its users, who pay premium prices for the same. Apple has finally decided to roll the dice on AI technology to unroll the company’s plan on how it will move forward in the age of AI: in partnership with artificial intelligence heavyweight OpenAI. Apple made the announcement at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference to mixed reactions from the industry and investors. With the announcement, Apple joins the AI race among giants such as Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. Apple’s new AI integration, called the ‘Apple Intelligence’ system, will accommodate all of the products within the company’s ecosystem at no extra charge.
Company CEO Tim Cook and several executives took the stage at the company’s annual developer’s conference to detail the different functionalities that the company hopes to provide in the future. These include the use of AI to make Siri ‘smarter’ and a handful of personalised tools that help enhance user productivity.
Conversations surrounding user privacy and data security are more pertinent than ever in the age of AI, especially given the technology’s reliance on current and relevant data to train its models. Apple, however is emphatic that the company is still committed to its mission of protecting its consumers. To this end, the company promises that AI functionalities will be run on its own chips, locally on its own devices, while cloud servers will only be relied on to provide certain limited services. The demonstrations presented at the event also drew attention repeatedly to the different measures that the company had put in place to ensure user privacy. One of these includes the use of dedicated servers to power the new features. According to Craig Federighi, the senior vice-president of software engineering, Apple’s AI model will be “aware of your personal data without collecting your personal data,” instead training a personalised model for every end-user without ever leaving the device.
Federighi further elaborates;
“For intelligence to be really useful, it has to be centred on you.To make that possible, it needs to be integrated into the experience all the time – it needs to be informed by your context and knowledge. And if it’s going to do that, there’s a lot of responsibility to protect your privacy.“
Despite the awareness of this responsibility, speaking to CCS Insight, Apple’s Chief Analyst and CMO, Ben Wood, admitted that the company had been forced to make some “tough decisions” on its long-held policy on user privacy and security. Looking back on the pressure to keep up with the new technology, Wood further said,
“Implementing a cloud-based AI solution is a fascinating tension which sees Apple arriving at the same conclusion as rivals such as Google – that it is not possible to fully run today’s AI features on-device, and those elements must be outsourced to the cloud. Apple will try to play up its security credentials, but this marks a shift in approach nonetheless.”
This promise, however, has also been met with harsh scepticism, most notably by competitor Elon Musk, owner of AI start-up xAI. The owner of the electric car company Tesla has already threatened to ban Apple devices from his factory floors for fears of data security. Expressing his ideas on an X post (formerly Twitter), Musk said
“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!
Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling down the river.”
Apple has yet to respond directly to these accusations, though it did emphasise its own proprietary contributions to the endeavour at the conference. According to Federighi, Apple Intelligence is bringing its own technology and foundational models to the table, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT focuses on enhancing Apple’s writing tools and search functions.
While Apple and others question the company’s foray into the great artificial beyond, however, it’s clear that Apple is stymied by its own commitment to live on the cutting edge of technology. For the past 12 months, Apple has been battling declining sales and consumer interest, perhaps exacerbated by its lack of apparent interest in AI. The share market wasn’t exactly raving about the announcement either, concluding with a 1.9% descent in share price on the same day. Fellow market player Samsung greeted the announcement with something close to derision, stating: “Adding ‘Apple’ doesn’t make it new or groundbreaking.Welcome to AI” in an X post.
(Theruni Liyanage)