Elon Musk has said he may ban all Apple devices.
"That is an unacceptable security violation," Musk, the CEO of electric-vehicle maker Tesla (TSLA.O), rocket maker SpaceX, and owner of social media company X, stated in a post on X. "Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage," he added.
Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Earlier in the day, Apple announced a slew of AI features across its apps and operating platforms and a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT technology to its devices. Apple claimed it had built AI with privacy "at the core" and would use a combination of on-device processing and cloud computing to power these features.
"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 said on X.
It is unlikely that anyone would follow Musk's lead, said Ben Bajarin, CEO of consulting firm Creative Strategies. He noted that Apple was trying to educate people that private cloud was as secure as keeping data on a device. "What Apple is trying to now add to the narrative is when data leaves and goes to the secure private cloud, it's similarly taking that same user data anonymization and firewalling of that information to you. Apple really never sees that," he explained.
Musk had sued OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015, and its CEO Sam Altman at the beginning of March, claiming they abandoned the startup's original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity and not for profit. He has also founded his own startup, xAI, in an attempt to challenge OpenAI and create an alternative to the viral chatbot ChatGPT. xAI was valued at $24 billion in its last funding round, where it raised $6 billion in series B funding.
