Musk threatens to ban iPhones with ChatGPT from his companies and put them into Faraday cage

As part of its WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple has finally revealed its plans regarding artificial intelligence. It announced an Apple Intelligence feature that will be implemented into its popular operation systems later this fall.

However, the idea of ever-expanding AI was not met with a unanimous acceptance. Right after the announcement, a certain vocal voice took X (formerly Twitter) to express his concerns – Elon Musk. And he was pretty harsh.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, among others, is especially concerned about the announced partnership between Apple and OpenAI: “If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation.”

Later, he added that this policy would be enforced on visitors too: “Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.” He voiced this message not only on his personal X account but also under the post shared by Apple’s CEO Tim Cook.

“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! Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river,” Musk added.

His last remark was later fact-checked by X’s Community Notes feature. The users clarified that Apple has actually built its own models, and the more demanding queries will be sent to Apple’s self-developed Private Cloud Compute platform.

In fact, Musk was subsequently challenged by tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee who claims to have spoken directly with Tim Cook: “He said Apple at no point sends any of your data to OpenAI without explicit user permission.” The user is always asked whether he wants to send a specific query to the ChatGPT if it is expected to do a better job than the built-in Apple AI features.

It didn’t take long until someone in Musk’s camp brought up the idea of X Phone, similar to people asking Tesla to produce its own Tesla Phone in the past. The user-proposed phone idea would involve a partnership with Samsung, open-sourced and privacy-focused X OS, and would involve optimization and integration of all available services across the portfolio of Musk’s companies, starting with X and ending with Neuralink.

“It is not out of the question,” Musk commented on the idea. However, as was the case in the past, these ideas remain fans’ wishful thinking – as of now.