Good news and troublesome news about Apple’s team-up with OpenAI

At last week’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced that Apple will bar using OpenAI with its upcoming Apple Intelligence system. The announcement has been well-received, and I think it’s a positive move, though there has been some follow-up news items that are, respectively, good and troublesome in my opinion.

The good news: At a recent Fortune Magazine Q&A, Mira Murati said both Apple and OpenAI believe strongly in privacy and won’t log data through Apple accounts or train models on user data.

The troublesome news: OpenAI has appointed former NSA director Paul Nakasone to its board of directors as well as its new safety committee. Nakasone stepped down from his government position earlier this year.

As my friend J. Scott Anderson notes, in light of all of the lawfare [use of the law by a country against its enemies] and shenanigans by the FBI and CIA in recent years, having an ex NSA guy in OpenAI sends up a lot of red flags.

As for Apple Intelligence, Apple says it will be deeply integrated into macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, and iPadOS 18. It harnesses the power of Apple silicon to understand and create language and images, take action across apps, and draw from personal context to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks. Here are all the features of Apple Intelligence as listed by Apple in a press release.

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