What does the Apple and OpenAI partnership mean for Apple device users?

Apple Intelligence will have enhanced language capabilities to help users find the right words and to quickly summarise lengthy content. It will also be used to enhance Siri capabilities and to allow users to create images such as unique emojis. 

One of the barriers to the widespread adoption of AI products and systems, such as ChatGPT, is data protection and confidentiality concerns. A central issue has been the use of input data to train AI models and the associated risks where this input data may be personal or confidential. So how is Apple dealing with these issues?

Apple prides itself on its privacy features, for example through its roll out of its ‘Ask App Not to Track’ feature which aims to limit the personal data that its users share with third parties, so its partnership with OpenAI has come as a surprise to many. However, Apple is expressly addressing the security concerns with Apple Intelligence. It has confirmed that some data processing will be carried out on the device itself, with more complicated tasks being completed in the cloud, but ensuring that no data is stored there. 

Additionally, Apple has explained that user IP addresses will be obscured and OpenAI won’t store requests. It has been suggested that the default position will be that OpenAI will not train its models on Apple user data, however Apple has confirmed that ChatGPT’s data-use policies will apply for users who choose to connect their ChatGPT accounts. Unless a ChatGPT user has specifically opted-out, their input data can currently be used by OpenAI to train its algorithms. 

This won’t be the last we hear about the privacy and security concerns with this partnership. As well as prioritising privacy throughout the design and build phases, the next step will be for Apple to provide clear and comprehensive privacy notice information to device users, so that they understand how Apple and OpenAI may process their personal data. Apple is emphasising that users will control when ChatGPT is used and will be asked before any of their information is shared, however users will need to be provided with sufficient information to enable them to make informed decisions.

For more information, please contact our privacy & data team.