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?
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.
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.
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As far as I know, Apple’s implementation of LLMs is completely opt-in
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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.
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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).
If you’re already willing to put up with all the other bullshit Apple does, I don’t see why you’d care about them doing this.
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.”
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.
apple can get their consumers in a cult-like state it seems.
their marketing and pr is scary good.
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
start watching at 1hr29sec for a great explanation of the vastly different approach to privacy with AI from Apple to Microsoft.
Because I don’t use apple products and don’t keep up with the news? My work laptop is Mac, but that’s work’s problem (I hate that thing)
