Is Apple's new AI feature a privacy concern? as claimed by Musk

Sounding caution, the entrepreneur wrote on 'X', "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 you down the river."

Interestingly, Musk was one of the co-founder of OpenAI, who walked out in 2018.

Changing the abbreviation of 'AI' from artificial intelligence to Apple Intelligence, the tech company has officially joined the AI race with its announcement that took the internet by storm.

Unlike AI on most Android phones which process and store user information on cloud, Apple devices will process most of the user requests on the device itself.

However, for some tasks for which it needs to use servers over the internet, the company will send only the data that is relevant to the task to be processed on "Apple silicon servers". Apple said these servers are foundation to 'Private cloud compute' which offers "cloud security'. “Private Cloud Compute allows Apple Intelligence to process complex user requests with groundbreaking privacy,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.

Apple has also said that these servers are encrypted and deletes user data after winding up the task. Not even our employees can access the data thereafter, the company added. 

The tech giant had also gone a step further to win users' trust and gave out some of the code used to power its AI server to be evaluated by independent researchers.

On the other hand, the integration of OpenAI and ChatGPT, the AI model is known to use and store user information including their queries for training purposes.

Many companies have restricted using chatGPT by employees.

But, Apple said it will notify users each time it has to bring in the services of chatGPT and only proceeds after your consent, giving you full control. Apple CEO, Tim Cook told tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee that Apple at no point sends any of your data to OpenAI without explicit user permission.

Apple also said that it hides users IP addresses when they choose to use chatGPT's services and also said that OpenAI will delete users data after completion of the task.

Adding further, the tech company said users can use the free version of chatGPT, which processes prompts on the device itself and will not store your information for training purposes, However if the users opt to use the paid version of ChatGPT they will be governed as per OpenAI's conditions.

Despite all the steps taken by Apple to offer extra protection, there will always be a little risk of privacy when dealing with tech. Some independent researchers have also flagged some minor concerns. We can have the full picture after a couple of months.