Earlier this week news broke that Apple will be partnering with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to bring AI features to the iPhone. However it’s also been reported that OpenAI features will be opt-in, which means anyone that isn’t interested won’t have these features forced on them.
This news comes from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, quoting people “familiar with the matter”. Apparently the opt-in nature of OpenAI features on iPhone is an attempt to appease wary customers — some of whom may not be happy with OpenAI having any kind of access to their personal data.
Gurman notes that OpenAI’s partnership with Apple may add extra scrutiny to the company, particularly in light of safety and privacy concerns. While Apple has been a strong proponent of data privacy and security for the past couple of years, the privacy factor may be of concern to some people.
Plus outsourcing means Apple can distance itself from any problems or controversies that may arise due to the AI getting stuff wrong. It wouldn’t be completely out of the firing line, but most of the blame would lie with OpenAI.
Gurman notes that this is very much a stop-gap measure, though. OpenAI may be responsible for a number of key iPhone AI features for the immediate future, this isn’t stopping Apple pursuing the technologies in house. This isn’t exclusive to AI either, since Apple has a long history of bringing various key bits of technology under its direct control — with Apple Silicon being one of the most notable recent examples.
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