1. iOS 18 — what's next for iPhone?
2. iPadOS 18 — will Apple finally unleash the power of iPad?
3. macOS 15 — what's new for Mac?
4. Apple Intelligence — what will it be able to do?
Hours after he threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies in response to iOS 18’s introduction of ChatGPT integration, Elon Musk continues to lampoon the company with a series of misinformed tweets about the company’s AI plans.
Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, a new AI tool that will power iPhone, iPad, and Mac when it’s launched later this year. The new features include “deeply integrated” AI that can generate images, understand and use language, organize Mail, proofread messages, generate summaries, and more. Apple’s Intelligence is a 3 billion parameter on-device language model and a much larger server-based language model that handles cloud-based requests through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute.
Despite the announcement, Elon Musk took to X, blasting the company over its AI plans. “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,” Musk lamented. “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI.”
Musk humiliated over Apple AI
As noted by plenty of commenters and a Community Note, Musk is patently wrong about his Apple AI claims. Apple has developed its own foundational AI models, including the aforementioned on-device model. Musk later posted a meme that implies that “your data” is sent from your iPhone to OpenAI. As is often the case with Apple’s announcements, privacy was a heavy focus of the unveiling. Apple says that for users generally, OpenAI won’t store requests, and the IP addresses of users who access the feature are obscured. For users who choose to connect their ChatGPT accounts to the service, ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply. However, given those users will have already agreed to this, the point seems moot.
Ironically, Elon Musk cofounded OpenAI all the way back in 2015 with Sam Altman. However, he left the firm in 2018 citing disagreement with “some of what OpenAI team wanted to do." Now, he’s an ardent critic of the company and has previously confirmed his plans to create a rival AI outfit.
His social media platform X even has its own integrated Grok AI chatbot, available to paid premium users on the platform.
Apple Intelligence isn’t yet available in the iOS 18, or any of Apple’s other early software iterations. The system itself, which is free, will be available in beta when iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia launch in the fall.
WWDC 2024 LIVE as it happened. Or check out our roundups for all the latest on the newly announced iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, visionOS 2, and Apple Intelligence.
