Tech billionaire, Elon Musk, has made a threat to ban Apple products from being used at his firms if the tech giant included OpenAI into the operating system.
The CEO of Tesla threatened to outlaw Apple devices at his companies, SpaceX and X, among others, in a post published on his verified X handle.
If Apple “integrates OpenAI at the (operating system) level,” Musk said that would constitute “an unacceptable security violation.”
He added that visitors “will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage,”
The cage is designed to restrict electromagnetic waves essential for communication, such as Bluetooth, cellphones, and wireless internet signals.
Experts believe that although Musk’s comments suggest he thinks OpenAI is firmly ingrained in Apple’s operating system and may thus sift through any personal and private data, both Apple and OpenAI have stated that customers are consulted before “any questions are sent to ChatGPT,” along with any documents or photographs.
Musk said it was “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 claimed that privacy is a core tenet of its AI innovations and that user data is protected by a combination of cloud computing and on-device processing. Musk’s doubt was evident despite these promises.
Early in March, Musk filed a lawsuit against Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015, alleging that they had abandoned the company’s initial goal of developing AI for the good of humanity rather than for financial gain.
To compete with OpenAI and create a substitute for the well-known chatbotChatGPT, he also started his own company, xAI.
We earlier reported that with $6 billion in series B capital secured during its most recent funding round, xAI was valued at $24 billion.