The announcement was made with great fanfare at Apple’s California headquarters. Monday June 10, at the opening of its annual conference for developers, the American technology giant presented its brand new service, “Apple Intelligence”. A name bringing together numerous tools for optimizing smartphones and computers using generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Creation of personalized emojis, automatic email summaries and long-awaited modernization of its voice assistant Siri… Apple is thus trying to catch up in the field of artificial intelligence by joining forces with OpenAI, parent company of ChatGPT. But for billionaire Elon Musk, this partnership would pose a danger for iPhone and Mac users.
Serious accusations despite safeguards
Barely announced on Monday June 10, these new developments have in fact triggered the wrath of the boss of SpaceX and Tesla. Shortly after this presentation, Elon Musk published a series of critical messages of this Apple-OpenAI partnership on his social network, X. On his personal account, he first announced that he would ban Apple devices in his companies if the company “integrates OpenAI at the operating system level “, denouncing an “unacceptable violation of the security” of the firm’s users.
“Apple has no idea what will happen once it entrusts your data to OpenAI. They stab you in the back,” assured the billionaire. Clearly, Elon Musk judges that the use of ChatGPT conversational AI in “Apple Intelligence” services will force the company to share private data of its users with the start-up which manages this service, OpenAI.
However, the seriousness of these messages raises questions, while those responsible for the multinational insisted on several occasions on Monday on the protection of personal data. During this conference, Apple’s vice president of software design, Craig Federighi, highlighted the capabilities of Apple Intelligence to operate independently on the brand’s smartphones, communicating no or very little data via the Internet.
The executive of the multinational thus presented the concept of “private cloud”, thanks to which a user can benefit from the computing power of remote servers for a request, without the data being stored or used by others.
Elon Musk’s resentment towards OpenAI
This promise is also repeated on the OpenAI website, which indicates that “requests are not stored by OpenAI and users’ IP addresses are hidden”, in the press release announcing its partnership with the Californian firm. Unlike the imminent threat denounced, these optional features and the data sharing generated therefore seem well supervised by Apple, known for its seriousness in this matter.
Therefore, the degree of seriousness of Elon Musk’s accusations leaves doubt about these intentions, while the billionaire maintains a grudge against OpenAI, a start-up that he co-founded before leaving in 2018. entrepreneur criticizes his managers for having adopted a commercial logic while the start-up was initially a non-profit enterprise. A “betrayal” for the billionaire, who even filed a complaint in the United States at the beginning of March against the company for violation of OpenAI’s statutes by its managers.
In July 2023, he subsequently founded his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, before unveiling his own generative AI chatbot, Grok, four months later. For its part, OpenAI flatly denied these accusations at the beginning of March, affirming, with supporting emails, that Elon Musk had himself considered in 2018 transforming the company into a for-profit entity.
The billionaire then proposed merging OpenAI with his company Tesla, according to company management. For OpenAI, the billionaire “claims to carry out these prosecutions in the name of humanity while the truth is […] that he conducts them to promote his own commercial interests.”