Elon Musk disclosed on Monday that he’ll ban Apple devices from his companies’ premises if the iPhone creator goes forward with its planned OpenAI integration.
Apple announced at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference on Monday that it will be integrating its new AI software, called Apple Intelligence, across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
It also separately announced a partnership with OpenAI, which includes the option to integrate ChatGPT powered by GPT-4o across some of its software, including its new and improved Siri. Apple said the ChatGPT integration will be available for free without an account in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year.
“When a user grants permission, Siri can tap into ChatGPT’s broad world knowledge and present an answer directly,” Apple said in the announcement.
Following the event, Elon Musk published a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, denouncing the partnership.
“Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”
Apple said in its announcement of the partnership that “protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT.” It said that device IP addresses are kept private, and OpenAI won’t store requests. Users who choose to connect their accounts will be under ChatGPT’s data-use policies.
Additionally, ChatGPT will be available in Apple’s systemwide Writing Tools, which help users generate content for anything they are writing about. With Compose, users can also access ChatGPT image tools to generate images in a wide variety of styles to complement what they are writing.
Privacy protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT — their IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests. ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply to users who choose to connect their accounts.
Musk’s distaste of OpenAI, which helped confound and finance, is nothing new. The billionaire has a public feud with its CEO Sam Altman and sued OpenAI after accusing it of betraying its original mission of being open-sourced and “developing AGI for the benefit of humanity.”
Since parting ways with OpenAI, Musk has launched his own rival AI company, xAI, and a ChatGPT rival called Grok.
Musk has also clashed with Apple and CEO Tim Cook in the past, though the two seemed to patch things up when Cook invited Musk for a tour of Apple HQ back in November 2022.
