Apple has finally,officially, entered the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race. Some of its upcoming products, Macs, iPhones will be filled with AI. The Apple version of AI will be transformative for Apple products. It will turn some of your Apple devices into assistants that manage your schedule, remind you, guide you and informs you through an upgraded version of Siri.
Apple promised to deliver its AI features wrapped in privacy to safeguard your data.
This however has not convinced some who care about AI. One non believer is Elon Musk. After AI announcements by Apple, Musk took to X (Twitter) to express his displeasure. Musk claimed that Open AI powered AI for Apple is a recipe for opening up Apple users to data merchants. Elon Musk may be on point here. Many will remember that Open AI has been accused by some, including publishers, of using their content to train their systems and provision itt in the form of answers for ChatGPT. What will stop Open AI from treating Apple users fairly? It remains to be seen how the Apple relationship with OpenAI will unfold.
This move by Apple is deeply concerning for a number of reasons. In the past, we’ve been accustomed to Apple products that keep everything Apple. Other software solutions were only entertained at a surface level. For this reason users have trusted Apple privacy. One wonders to what extent will Apple deliver on its privacy promises when other AI companies will have backdoor access to the Apple products.
It has to be emphasised that Apple has been a leader in privacy protections and it promises to do so even with this AI move. At the same time, users will have to understand that some AI solutions are still at an experimental stage. Rules of engagement are still being developed. In the process of deploying solutions, tech companies will make mistakes. In future, I will not be surprised when they are fined for some of their actions. It’s safe to say users will have to tread carefully. AI will deliver major benefits, at the same time it will surprise us in many ways that we have not imagined. We all have to open our eyes as we use these tools. It won’t be easy. It may be necessary to choose different brands as most trusted brands are beginning to lose their ethics in the interest of being ahead in the AI race. It may be necessary to scale down while everyone is still trying to find a balance between innovation and safeguarding human rights. Apple has been a vanguard of privacy, it is now entering a slippery slope to a point of return. If Apple delivers privacy protections while entertaining tech companies it will have solved a major AI challenge.There’s no doubt that this AI addition may move users to devices that only deliver what consumers want, basic communication. Tech companies will have to work hard to earn the trust of consumers to avoid an exodus from tech products we’ve trusted for many years.
