I’ve watched the keynote and read some stuff on the internet and I’ve found this video about a dude talking about the new update (I linked it here because if you didn’t see the keynote, this is probably enough)
Is it just me, or… does no one address that Apple does a Microsoft move by basically scanning everything on every machine and feeding this into their LLM?
As far as I know, Apple’s implementation of LLMs is completely opt-in
Apple also has a MUCH better track record relating to user privacy over pretty much every other big tech company.
On the contrary, Apple’s track record for collecting data is deliberately obtuse and utilizes dark patterns to make it as difficult as possible to not upload your info to them.
From the article,
the user is given the option to enable Siri, but “enabling” only refers to whether you use Siri’s voice control. “Siri collects data in the background from other apps you use, regardless of your choice, unless you understand how to go into the settings and specifically change that,”…“In practice, protecting privacy on an Apple device requires persistent and expert clicking on each app individually"…the steps required are “scattered in different places.”
Apple devices might be arguably more secure than other vendors, but security and privacy are not the same thing.
Removed by mod
This entire article is a nothingburger from 3 years ago. You’re telling me that the button saying “ask app not to track” still makes it possible for the app to track you? Almost like there’s a difference between the words “ask” and “enforce”? Did you read the article you sent? How is that even in the same universe as installing a keylogger into every Copilot PC by default?
I never claimed Apple is perfect at privacy, I said they are better than the competition.
Removed by mod
I didn’t know that was a controversial opinion? Do you think that Apple are as bad as Google or Meta in terms of privacy?
Apple does have privacy violations, but the things I’ve seen them get caught doing are minor compared to the things that many other companies do openly.
The main point of the article you’ve linked is that Apple put the equivalent of a “Do not track” option in a browser, and it did exactly the same of a “Do not track” option in a browser (nothing). Does that mean that any browser with a DNT request option is bad for privacy?
Adding an option that is somewhat misleading isn’t ideal, but it’s incomparable to something like Cambridge analytica incident, or the tracking that Google put basically everywhere on the Internet.
By the way, I am in no way defending Apple. I’m just saying that everything that Apple does, companies like Google and Meta also do, just ten times over.
I believe an iPhone is way better than a Pixel for privacy, even if both are far from ideal. I’d love to be proven wrong, tho.
Removed by mod
Microsoft’s thing takes a screenshot of everything on your screen and saves and indexes it. Opened up your password manager and revealed a password? Saved. Opened a porn site in a private tab in any browser aside from Edge? Saved. Opened up a private encrypted chat to try to get away from your abusive partner/parents? Saved and indexed. Logged into a portal at work showing HIPAA information? Saved and indexed.
Apple’s thing is basically a better search feature of all the data you already have saved, that apps have already opted-in to sharing. It runs on device, and Apple has promised they do not send the data back to train the models. They also have some generic ChatGPT-like tool to help rewrite your documents, but that’s 100% opt-in so nobody really cares about it, it’s easy to just not use.
Came here to say this much less eloquently. Left this comment cause I wanted to use eloquent 😌
It’s not ChatGPT like, it is ChatGPT, specifically GPT-4o.
See press release and versioning at bottom of the page.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/06/introducing-apple-intelligence-for-iphone-ipad-and-mac/
So, Apple is using the latest version of the best LLM out there and its opt-in. That’s a hugely different approach as you mentioned.
Siri can ask ChatGPT but only if you explicitly allow it. They specifically said ChatGPT is only used if you asked for something that needs world knowledge, and even then there is a prompt asking for permission to send data to ChatGPT every time. Apple even said in interviews that you can completely disable the ChatGPT integration if you want.
Fair point.
deleted by creator
I’m going to copy paste a reply I left somewhere else. This was for iOS AI, I’m unsure what the implemention for macOS is. If they are scanning everything then I do not support it.
From what I saw,
MS Recall is a 24/7 AI monitor system that captures everything you look at and saves it for later. They didn’t even do the bare minimum for protecting the data, it was just dumped in an unencytped folder where anyone get wholesale access to the data. All trust has been lost.
Apple is using AI as a tool to improve specific tasks/features that a user invokes. Things like assistant queries and the new calculator. They have said some promising things in regards to privacy, specificly with the use of ChatGPT - any inquiry sent to ChatGPT will ask the user permission first and obscure their IP. This shows they care enough to try, they have not lost our trust - but we remain skeptical.
If apple tries the same thing by scanning everything wholesale, then that’s getting over shadowed by the promises made by the implentaion on the much more popular iOS.
OP will never acknowledge this.
deleted by creator
Deleted
deleted by creator
Apple at least talks about privacy and security. Windows just dumped that shit right on you and is planning on storing in unencrypted databases… like, I would expect there to be enough brainpower at M$ to be able to write an application and then secure it… Just use Linux and when Ubuntu and Fedora decide they want to implement those features… OpenBSD it is :D
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/05/deleted-iphone-photos-show-up-again-after-ios-update
So photos were forever stored on a database… How’s that privacy and security? This isn’t even just another iCloud leak… these were things people thought were deleted coming back.
Apple likes to talk because talk is cheap. Just like Apple used to say that Apple products didn’t get viruses. Or how Google said do no evil. Talk is cheap.
It’s really simple: Microsoft is a business solutions company. Microsoft helps your boss spy on you at work. Your boss is their customer, not you.
Apple is a consumer products company. You are their customer. They market their products on privacy and security. Betraying that marketing message by spying on users is shooting themselves in the foot, so they’re incentivized not to do that.
Neither company is trustworthy. Economic incentives are the trustworthy concept here. Barring screwups, we can trust both companies to do what is profitable to them. Microsoft profits by spying on users, Apple does not (not right now anyway).
they definitely do spy on their users and sell their data, but are very clever at marketing their items as fashionable and people fall for it
Do you have a source for this?
Specifically about personal data…
Apple may engage third parties to act as our service providers and perform certain tasks on our behalf, such as processing or storing data, including personal data, in connection with your use of our services and delivering products to customers.
As for anonymized aggregate data…
Aggregated data is considered non‑personal data for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.
(All from Apple’s privacy page)
So they may not be explicitly selling identifiable information (which is usually pretty standard with big companies, I think), they are sharing it with other companies (which is normal)…and they’re also almost definitely selling anonymized data (which is also standard).
LMAO at thinking Apple doesn’t spy on you
My employer runs macos. So I’d argue Mac is still a business solution, but not as common as windows. Tools exist for managing macs at scale as well.
If you watch WWDC, they shared how it works. They have a private cloud that does not persist data on it, only processes it. Also, it’s audited by a third party and there is a cryptographic mechanism that will not allow your request to be accepted unless the server software has been publicly signed by the auditor. At least, this is my best understanding of it from what I remember.
Also, in the same presentation they announced that you can now lock your Apps and hide them, which will keep its data out of the OS search results. I am fairly certain this also means it’s opted out of ML/AI processing given that any LLM would rely on the same search index.
I think it’s because Apple has a “fandom”, whereas when’s the last time you heard someone being a weird fan of Microsoft outside of Xbox? It just doesn’t really exist. The people with Apple devices are often “fans” of Apple, not simply people who bought a product. I think it’s that simple.
You can look at security failures as mistakes or conspiracies.
It’s very easy to see the Microsoft failures as conspiracies the more you learn about them because Microsoft’s material interests are aligned with the failures. To steal someone’s turn of phrase: “Microsoft gives you a foot gun for free but charges for bulletproof shoes”.
It’s very easy to see apples security failure as mistakes because the more you learn about them the more you see how apples material interests arent aligned with the failures. If I had to make a similar one liner, “apple sells you designer shoes with drop rated toe boxes. They might not be bulletproof, but you also don’t have a foot gun.”
apple can get their consumers in a cult-like state it seems.
their marketing and pr is scary good.
I think it all remains to be seen, Apple was very specific in their wording about privacy, probably BECAUSE they saw what happened to Microsoft. We didn’t see any live demos and I am still a bit skeptical that it will work that well.
A key difference in how Apple is doing it though, is that it only exposes necessary data as context to an LLM request. Whereas Microsoft was capturing and training on everything.
I don’t have an iPhone 14 so luckily I can’t test this day one, I will wait for reviews and security researchers to look it over.
I think Apple’s emphasis on the privacy and security stuff would have happened anyway, because they’ve been positioning themselves as privacy focused for several years now.
Microsoft and Apple are both privacy-disregarding monopolistic megacorporations. The difference is Microsoft is slowly degrading in competence and their PR machine is no longer able to compensate
because Windows is a piece of shit that people in here are forced to use to play video games and Apple is just kind of doing its own thing being a piece of shit
deleted by creator
More like an apples to windows comparison.
