Synthetic intelligence has clearly been the {industry} craze for the previous couple years. Whereas giant language fashions are extremely succesful, they’ve at all times include a little bit of a compromise: privateness. Finally, you’re nonetheless utilizing a mannequin hosted within the cloud, and all your conversations are saved on some server.
Apple’s at all times had privateness on the core of its merchandise – so within the months main as much as the debut of Apple’s AI options, many individuals puzzled: how would Apple deal with it? Immediately, we delve into precisely how.
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On-device fashions
This one is a bit apparent, however Apple Intelligence options are powered by on-device fashions. That’s why there’s such a strict machine requirement. You may solely make the most of Apple Intelligence when you’ve got an iPhone 15 Professional or iPhone 16 mannequin. On the iPad and Mac facet, it’s a bit extra lenient, with all M1 gadgets being supported.
Both approach, that machine requirement isn’t strict for no purpose, it’s as a result of working giant language fashions on machine requires numerous energy and numerous reminiscence. To be particular, it requires 8GB of unified reminiscence, which Apple solely begun delivery on the iPhone 15 Professional.
With on machine fashions, any requests you make don’t go away your telephone. Granted, not each Apple Intelligence request will run on-device. Apple additionally has non-public cloud compute for heavier requests, which I’ll clarify in a bit. That mentioned, for probably the most half, present Apple Intelligence options lean closely on the chipset in your machine, reminiscent of Notification summaries and Genmoji. This retains your requests and private data native.
Apple’s additionally expanded the capabilities of on machine fashions this 12 months at WWDC25, permitting builders to implement options utilizing Apple’s on machine fashions, in any other case often known as Apple Foundational Fashions. This’ll doubtlessly deter builders from utilizing suppliers like OpenAI or Google Gemini for passing your non-public consumer knowledge to, although there may be the most important incontrovertible fact that Apple Intelligence is barely accessible on a small variety of gadgets.
Personal Cloud Compute
As alluded to earlier, Apple additionally has a cloud answer for dealing with Apple Intelligence requests. It wasn’t in motion a ton throughout iOS 18, however it’s being utilized a good bit extra with iOS 26. For instance, now you can use Siri Shortcuts to ship prompts to Apple fashions, together with cloud fashions.
Apple has an extremely detailed weblog publish on how Personal Cloud Compute retains your consumer data non-public. In brief, the system is constructed to not retain data – and you’ll confirm that. On high of constructing the system in such a approach that consumer knowledge wouldn’t be accessible by Apple or an attacker, Apple needed to launch the software program photos for Personal Cloud Compute, permitting unbiased researchers to confirm Apple’s claims.
You may study extra about Apple’s Personal Cloud Compute and the way it works in our publish right here. It’s a somewhat attention-grabbing system, and is definitely industry-leading for server-based AI privateness.
ChatGPT Integration
Final however not least, Apple has a particular deal with OpenAI to make sure that Apple consumer knowledge isn’t retained by OpenAI, and that Apple consumer requests aren’t utilized in coaching knowledge for future fashions. There’s additionally the truth that requests are by no means despatched to ChatGPT with out the consumer offering permission.
Final month, The New York Occasions sued OpenAI, and the court docket demanded that OpenAI must retain ChatGPT consumer knowledge indefinitely. Historically, OpenAI deletes this knowledge from its methods inside 30 days.
Some folks have puzzled if that impacts Apple customers, however relaxation assured, OpenAI has acknowledged that enterprise prospects using Zero Information Retention APIs aren’t impacted, as a result of OpenAI wouldn’t have saved that knowledge at any level.
Given this truth, utilizing ChatGPT by means of Siri is technically the most non-public approach of accessing these fashions – highlighting Apple’s underlying dedication to consumer privateness, even within the age of AI.
My favourite Apple accent suggestions:
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