Apple Announces Integration of AI Technology in New Phones, Musk Threatens Ban at His Companies
The highly anticipated annual developer conference held by tech giant Apple took place in California on Monday. During the event, the company made a major announcement that it would be incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into its devices. Aptly named “Apple Intelligence”, this collection of features includes text and image generation, as well as an improved version of the company’s virtual assistant, Siri. The integration of the widely popular ChatGPT, owned by OpenAI, will support these new AI features on Apple’s phones.
However, the news was met with opposition from billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X. Musk, who has a history with OpenAI as one of its founders, has now turned against the company and accused it of not adhering to its founding principles. He warned that he would ban iPhones from all of his companies due to what he alleges are security concerns. In a statement, Musk stated that if OpenAI is integrated at the operating system level, then Apple devices will be prohibited at his companies. He also claimed, without evidence, that the Silicon Valley company hands over user data to OpenAI.
Apple, on the other hand, assured its users that the new AI system will prioritize privacy by conducting most processes on the device itself. Any external computing will be done through a new procedure called “private cloud computer”, which the company claims will keep users’ data secure. They also mentioned that users will have to give consent before any requests are shared with OpenAI.
This clash between Musk and Apple highlights the diverging views surrounding AI and its rapid development and implementation. When OpenAI first announced ChatGPT in November 2022, it sparked an AI arms race in the tech industry. Since then, companies like Microsoft and Google have surged ahead of Apple in their use of AI. However, with this latest announcement, Apple has positioned itself as a major player in the race.
This move comes at a crucial time for Apple, as the company has seen a decline in global sales in recent years and was recently overtaken as the second most valuable company in the world by AI microchip maker, Nvidia. The integration of ChatGPT, a successful AI start-up, directly into Apple’s phones will provide millions of users with access to this technology and place the company alongside other tech giants that are investing in AI as the future of their industry.
Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed the company’s belief that AI will be “indispensable” in its products in the years to come. However, just last year, Cook was quoted in the Washington Post as being less enthusiastic about AI, stating that generative AI still has “a number of issues that need to be sorted.” After Monday’s conference, Apple executives revealed that the company is looking to make more deals with other AI chatbots in order to give users more options for generative tools.
The use of popular AI models has been criticized for its flaws, including the creation of false information. Despite this, Apple remains confident in the potential of AI and its impact on the tech industry.