Elon Musk, businessman and investor known for his key roles in space company SpaceX and automotive company Tesla, has criticised Apple for integrating ChatGPT in its offerings. Apple, at the 2024 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024), had announced that it would be integrating ChatGPT into experiences within iOS, iPadOS, macOS as well as Siri.
Elon Musk added in his post on X that he found it absurd that Apple is unable to come up with its own artificial intelligence. “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 and 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,” he said in a post seething with criticism.
Also read: Apple Announces Partnership with OpenAI at WWDC 2024, ChatGPT Comes to Siri
OpenAI, on the other hand, has clarified in its official blog post that privacy protections are built in when accessing ChatGPT within Siri and Writing Tools, and that requests are not stored by OpenAI, and users’ IP addresses are obscured. Users can also choose to connect their ChatGPT account, which means their data preferences will apply under ChatGPT’s policies.
However, Musk says that Apple will not be able to to protect privacy by handing over data to a third party. “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 said. Musk has also threatened Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple that he would ban the company’s devices across all this establishments if they go ahead with the ChatGPT integration.
“Don’t want it. Either stop this creepy spyware or all Apple devices will be banned from the premises of my companies,” he said to Tim Cook while adding that integrating OpenAI at the OS level was an unacceptable security violation. “And visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,” he added. He further went on to state that this development was “embarrassing” for Apple and that the Apple Intelligence offering was “neither Apple nor Intelligent”.
