Apple Intelligence: Siri Gets a ChatGPT Makeover, But Privacy Concerns Remain

On Monday at its ongoing, World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024), Apple Inc. announced the launch of its highly anticipated Artificial Intelligence Product, Named Apple Intelligence, bringing an end to speculations around its efforts to be among the key players in the AI ecosystem.

Apple however, is known for their late entrance into any field and at the same time Category Kings, only this time, it is taking a different approach to the game, by instead partnering with already known players in the AI space, to build its “Apple Intelligence” unlike Rival Google who hurried back in 2023 to keep up with the heat it was getting at that time from the media and investors, following the successful launch and mass adoption of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to develop its own Generative AI  model, which ushered its users into its “Gemini Era”.

 We did expect to hear that news of Apple’s AI Models that are better fine-tuned to outperform existing Models, from OpenAI, Google AI, Meta AI and XAI among others, but instead, Apple Announced its Apple Intelligence isn’t powered by an Apple LLM, instead, it’s of selected use cases for OpenAI’s already popular ChatGPT Model, tailored for use across all its existing operating system MacOS, IOS, IpadOS and devices as well, a move that is similar to Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, that saw it ChatGPT API powering its copilot suite of AI solutions.

Apple executive SVP Craig Federighi confirmed plans to work with other third-party AI models; We’re looking forward to doing integrations with other models, including Google Gemini, for instance, in the future. He also went on to state that at the moment there is currently no news of a breakthrough in that direction, as they are still working on the possibilities. The only news at the moment is that its Voice assistant Siri is getting a makeover with ChatGPT under its hood, instead of retiring into a pension as some fans had joked online.

Also, Apple users don’t have to pay or sign up for an account to access ChatGPT, as they can interact with ChatGPT using SIRI. In terms of Privacy, SVP Craig Federighi informed that users have nothing to worry about regarding the privacy of their data, as only their permissions would always be required before starting any conversation that would require personal data with ChatGPT

Now you can do it right through Siri, without going through another tool,” the Apple executive said. “Siri, it’s imperative to understand, Will ask you before you go to ChatGPT. Then you can have that conversation with ChatGPT. Then, if there’s any helpful data referenced in your question that you might want to supply to ChatGPT, we’re going to ask, ‘Do you want to send this photo?’ From a privacy point of view, you’re always in control and have total transparency.”

Criticism of Apple’s New Intelligence (AI)

Chief among the critics is Telsa and XAI’s CEO Elon Musk, who despite being among the founding members of OpenAI, has been a staunch critic of the Company’s operations since it entered into Partnership with Microsoft, in a series of X Post after the keynote address on Monday, Musk threatened to Ban the use of Apple device at any of his companies, if Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level,” Apple devices would be banned from his businesses and visitors would have to check their Apple devices at the door where they’ll be “stored in a Faraday cage.”

 At the moment, there is limited access to Apple Intelligence, as it will only be available to users of the iPhone 15 series