Elon Musk threatens to ban Apple devices from his companies after OpenAI deal

• Businessman raises concerns about privacy and security

• They say they will ban Apple devices if the company “integrates OpenAI at the system level.”

Apple announced this Monday at WWDC 2024 an alliance with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT for iOS, iPadOS and macOS. The news, expected in part due to a wave of rumors and leaks, prompted a response from Elon Musk, who backtracked on the threat amid his concerns over issues such as privacy and security.

The businessman said he would ban Apple devices from his companies if the Apple company “integrates OpenAI at the operating system level.” In addition, he called the agreement an “unacceptable security breach” and specified that visitors must leave their Apple devices in a “Faraday cage” at the entrance to the offices.

Elon Musk attacks Apple

Musk continued to post on did not indicate any prohibition. Recall that Musk boasts leadership positions in Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) and Neuralink.

A ban on Apple products (we don’t know if it’s just the iPhone or also iPad and Mac) would be a pretty drastic measure. In any case, it should be noted that much of what Musk says usually does not come true, although his words achieve some media impact due to his role in the business world.

We’ll have to wait to find out what happens, although for now we can analyze Apple’s statement. The Cupertino company will enhance most of the artificial intelligence functions in its systems with own language modelsalthough they have stated that they want users to use external models.

The agreement with OpenAI is part of this effort. iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 users will be able to access ChatGPT with GPT-4o for free through the system’s new Siri and writing tools. Apple promises that requests “will not be logged” and that it will ask questions before sending information to OpenAI.

Siri’s new features, such as better language understanding, will work with Apple Intelligence. However, when we ask a question that requires extraneous information, the voice assistant tells us: will ask permission to share a question with ChatGPT. We may also include images or documents as presentations.

At the writing level, ChatGPT will help us write content anywhere in the system and also generate images. We can use it, for example, to write a story and illustrate it. It is currently unclear what the process for activating OpenAI’s conversational chatbot functionality on the system will look like.

It should be noted that Apple has promised that it will add support other external AI models in the future, so it’s possible that we’ll also see Google or Anthropic technology integrated. We also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Musk has been promoting a crusade with OpenAI for some time now.

Earlier this year, the businessman sued the Sam Altman-led company for failing to adhere to its founding principles. At the height of the dispute, a version emerged according to which Musk, who was part of the OpenAI founding team, wanted to merge the startup with Tesla.

Things didn’t end well, and Musk He eventually left in February 2018., also apparently to avoid a conflict of interest, since the electric vehicle company was also working with artificial intelligence for its autonomous driving systems. Additionally, he currently has his own artificial intelligence company called X.AI. This can help us better understand what is happening today.

Images | Daniel Oberhaus (2018) | Manzana

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