Elon Musk has threatened to ban Apple devices, including the iPhone, from the companies he founded, citing concerns about whether the iPhone maker’s new partnership with OpenAI will protect users’ personal data.
“If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS (operating system) level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies.” Musk posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday. “That is an unacceptable security violation.”
Musk runs or co-founded a number of companies including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX, tunnelling startup the Boring Company and X, which he acquired in 2022.
Musk went on to say that visitors to his companies will have to, “check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.” The Faraday cage is an enclosure that shields anything placed inside it from electromagnetic fields.
Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Musk’s remarks come in the heels of Apple’s annual developer event, in which the iPhone-maker unveiled a swathe of new AI-based features, underpinned by what the company calls Apple Intelligence. Those features include the ability to rewrite or summarize notes as well as Siri’s improved capability to understand the context of conversations. Apple also used the conference to announce its partnership with OpenAI, saying its users would gain access to ChatGPT through Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant.
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The iPhone maker said to expect the ChatGPT integration in its operating systems for its iPhone, iPad and Mac computers later this year. The integration with ChatGPT is an optional feature, the company said, demonstrating how you can opt in to using OpenAI’s chatbot on its website. Apple said its devices would not collect personal data, but would be aware of it.
“Privacy protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT — their IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests,” Apple said in a Monday press release.
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is making progress on turning its Grok chatbot into one with multimodal capabilities, according to public developer documents.
The iPhone maker has long championed privacy as a core value when designing products and services, and it said that Apple Intelligence would set “a new standard for privacy in AI.” To help achieve this, Apple said certain requests will be processed on-device without an internet connection, while more complex requests will be routed to the cloud in data centers with Apple-made chips.
“Data is not stored or made accessible to Apple and is only used to fulfill the user’s requests, and independent experts can verify this privacy.”
Musk’s relationship with OpenAI has been complex. He co-founded the organization in 2015 before stepping down from the board in 2018. Earlier this year, Musk took legal action against the makers of ChatGPT, incuding CEO Sam Altman, arguing the company has abandoned its founding mission to develop AI that will benefit humanity in favor of profits.
