Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Apple Devices Over ChatGPT Integration

Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Apple Devices Over ChatGPT Integration

Billionaire Elon Musk has issued a stern warning that he will prohibit the use of Apple devices within his companies if Apple incorporates OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems.

“If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation,” Musk emphasized in a June 10 post on X.

Musk even proposed that visitors to Tesla, SpaceX, and his other ventures would need to store their Apple devices in a Faraday cage upon entry.

At Apple’s 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, the tech giant unveiled “Apple Intelligence” — a suite of new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features set to be introduced in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year.

This development had been leaked by Bloomberg over the weekend.

One key feature will allow Apple’s voice assistant Siri, to consult ChatGPT when answering user queries. “Users will be asked for consent before any questions, documents, or photos are sent to ChatGPT, and Siri will then provide the response directly.”

This feature will be powered by GPT-4o, the latest iteration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

However, Musk criticized Apple’s decision, calling it “patently absurd” that Apple “isn’t smart enough” to develop its own AI. He argued that Apple would compromise customer privacy and security by outsourcing to a third-party AI. “They’re selling you down the river,” he remarked.

“Apple using the words ‘protect your privacy’ while handing your data over to a third-party AI that they don’t understand and can’t themselves create is not protecting privacy at all,” Musk stated in another post on X.

Despite his strong opinions, Musk did not elaborate on the privacy protections associated with OpenAI’s integration. Consequently, his post triggered X’s “readers added context” feature, which included a link to Apple’s press release. The release clarified that user IP addresses would remain anonymous and that OpenAI would not retain requests.

Interestingly, the announcement of Apple Intelligence did not lead to a price surge for AI-related cryptocurrencies. According to CoinGecko, Render (RNDR), Fetch.ai (FET), and SingularityNET (AGIX) have seen declines of 5.9%, 3.3%, and 3.9%, respectively, over the past 24 hours.