Elon Musk announced Monday that he’ll ban Apple devices from his companies’ premises if the iPhone creator goes forward with its planned OpenAI integration.
Apple held its annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference Monday, and the biggest takeaway was OpenAI’s ChatGPT will be paired with Apple’s assistant Siri.
In one example shown, Siri recommended that the iPhone user consult ChatGPT for further dinner recipe ideas, flagging all the way that these new answers were coming from OpenAI’s chatbot and advising users to ‘check important info for mistakes’.
Musk responded to the partnership on X, saying employees and visitors to his companies would ‘have to check their Apple devices at the door’ where they will be stored in a ‘Faraday cage’ – a cage that blocks electromagnetic fields.
He continued: ‘If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation.’
Siri will be fitted with GPT-4o, the latest iteration of the famous chatbot that some users say sounds like Scarlett Johansson’s character in the movie ‘Her.’
Prior to Musk’s post criticizing the move, Apple promised its users that unlike ordinary usage of ChatGPT direct from OpenAI’s platform, users’ private information and their queries will not be logged or stored.
This new, extensive presence of AI across Apple’s software – given the brand name ‘Apple Intelligence’ – includes AI-summarized documents in Mail and Notes and an image-generating AI dubbed ‘Image Playground’, plus ChatGPT’s integration with Siri.
Meanwhile, ‘Math Notes’ transforms Apple’s calculator app into living piece of scratch paper to do complex math problems on.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that one of the five criteria Apple Intelligence needs to meet is being ‘private’.
According to his presentation, Apple Intelligence ‘will be keeping users’ personal information on their devices rather than uploading it to an Apple-owned cloud’ thanks to the company’s powerful new M chips.
But Musk made it clear in a subsequent post that he doesn’t buy that, saying that Apple is ‘selling you down the river’.
‘It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy,’ Musk wrote.
‘Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.’
Replies to Musk’s post were filled with people begging him to release his own phone using either X branding or Tesla branding.
‘Honestly at this point we need Tesla or X to come out with a phone powered by Starlink,’ right-wing film director Robby Starbuck wrote.
‘I would switch in a heartbeat,’ he said, adding that he doesn’t trust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
‘I don’t want his tech inside my phone, inside my office or near my family,’ Starbuck said.
Another user seemed to agree, replying to Musk: ‘Help us and develop the X Phone!’
Elon Musk cofounded OpenAI with Sam Altman back in 2015, and the company was supposed to be a non-profit to serve as a check on the potential threats artificial intelligence could pose to humanity.
But their relationship soured when OpenAI executives refused a buyout offer from Tesla in 2018, causing Musk to leave the company.
In March, Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, its current CEO, over an alleged betrayal of the company’s founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profit.
Sam Altman responded to Musk’s lawsuit on an episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast, saying that he didn’t believe it was about OpenAI being open source or not.
OpenAI’s founders published a series of emails from Musk where he supported the company’s pivot to a mix between non-profit and for-profit, Business Insider reported.
Musk also joked on X that he would drop the lawsuit if the company changed its name to ClosedAI.
‘I think that speaks to the seriousness with which Elon means the lawsuit – and it’s an astonishing thing to say,’ Altman said.