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
And local. Probably. Maybe. Perchance.
It’s all local, except when it isn’t.
It’s both local and remote, according to their page. There are some activities that run on a “private cloud”. I’d imagine that image creation is one of those
While this is true, is it fact?
That we’ll probably only know after someone tries to test all the features without an active internet connection
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.
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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.
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People really don’t want to believe that Apple, Microsoft and Google are all not on their side, so they choose to believe Apple is good, as some kind of a lesser evil.
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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.
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Did anyone ever believe that did anything?
I mean “asking” an app or webpage not to track you? That is ridiculous, the function should work to obfuscate your data from the app/website in the first place.
I say this as an iPhone user.
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 😌
Well eloquented, bravo
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.
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I saw a comment somewhere that said: “people have been burnt by Microsoft too many times, while Apple still has a benefit of the doubt for many people in regards to privacy”. People still have some trust in Apple, compared to MS.
Edit: Found the comment by @[email protected]
If Apple announced Recall? Apple wouldn’t announce Recall, that’s the whole point. Apple wouldn’t be so brazen and stupid to push a tool that is so obviously invasive and so poorly implemented. Apple earned its trust by not making those mistakes.
But if they did decide to say fuck it and implement something like Recall, of course people would trust them. That’s what trust means: consumers take them at their word. But if it’s as bad as Microsoft’s Recall, Apple would burn all that trust when people found out.
People don’t believe Microsoft because they have long since burned any trust and good will for most of their consumers. They have proven time and time again they don’t give a shit about users’ wants or needs, and users have felt that. So when they announce Recall, they have no earned trust. No believes them. There’s no good faith to cushion this. And it turns out everyone was right not to grant them that trust.
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.
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.
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
Exactly.
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.
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MS has a horrible track record on privacy or even caring about their customers; Apple, deservedly or not, has higher level of consumer’s trust
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MS brought out features too obviously ripe for abuse built in the most insecure way, lied about it and was quickly proven a liar. Apple says they built their AI in a secure way, their fans believe them and have not challenged
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Undoubtedly, there is still a huge Apple fanbase that would tell you Apple’s turds smell nice. So there’s a portion of that in the mix as well
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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.
Someone said it before on the internet: Apple is not a tech company, Apple is a marketing company.
I mean if you want to dig into it, Apple is a company that makes most of its from money from selling tech. They spend a lot on highly effective advertising, but they pay actual advertising companies to do that. So I don’t think that qualifies them as an advertising company unless you’re just trying to be dismissive. You make your money from making and selling tech, you’re a tech company first.
Google and Meta make the vast majority of their money by selling ads and selling user data to other advertising companies so they can create their own targeted ads. That by definition makes them ads companies more than tech companies.
Microsoft sells mostly software/services to enterprise clients, they’re a B2B software company. Amazon too with AWS, etc. I read the other day that with how big NYT’s word games have gotten they’re more of a gaming company that also sells newspapers these days.
Anyway, yeah you can call Apple an advertising company or a fashion company or whatever but the fact is they’re more of a tech company than most of the other companies you probably think of as tech companies. Apple-produced tech is regularly compared to the likes of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD. You can’t say the same for the other top “tech” companies.
Not true. I hate them both for this and a litany of other reasons. Holding back humanity’s development and being the chief cause of e-waste are at the top of the pile.
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.
