Elon Musk caused a stir when he threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies if the ChatGPT feature was integrated into iOS 18 as Apple announced.

At a presentation at WWDC 2024, Apple announced a new integration that allows users to access system-wide ChatGPT through the authoring tool. Users can ask ChatGPT to write stories for children or create images to complement articles. These features allow users to access ChatGPT for free without creating an account. This is expected to bring a large number of requests from Apple users for OpenAI.

Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi emphasized, “users have complete control over their use of ChatGPT and will be consulted before any of your information is shared.” . These features are only available on iPhone Pro 15 models and devices using the M1 chip or newer.

However, billionaire Elon Musk has publicly criticized this cooperation. On X, he said that Apple is putting users at risk of privacy invasion when "smuggling" data to OpenAI.

“It's absurd that Apple is not smart enough to create its own AI, but can guarantee OpenAI will protect your safety and privacy!”, Musk said, threatening to ban Apple devices. at his companies if Tim Cook does not stop this terrifying act of espionage.

Although Apple asserts that users have full control over the use of ChatGPT and personal information, Musk believes that users are not knowledgeable enough about privacy issues. He believes that if users were free to choose alternative AI bots, like Anthropic's Claude or xAI's Grok (the AI ​​company founded by Musk), Apple would not dare to act like that.

In fact, Apple has also hinted that Google Gemini could be integrated in the future.

Both Apple and OpenAI say that user data will only be shared with explicit consent and that these interactions are designed to be safe. OpenAI notes in a new blog post that “requests are not stored by OpenAI and the user's IP address is hidden.” Users can also choose to connect their ChatGPT account to access paid features, but this is an optional feature.

Images, text, or search queries sent to ChatGPT are sent without identifiers and are deleted once the results are generated and sent to the user. Even if Apple and ChatGPT lie and conspire to collect user data, the data they receive is only what users actively choose to send.

To be clear, there is no reason to fear that ChatGPT can be accessed by Siri or Writing Tools. This is not significantly different from installing the ChatGPT app on an iPhone. However, the current situation also raises many questions about privacy and security as major technology companies continue to integrate new AI technologies into their products.