Apple plans to analyze user device data to enhance its AI platform, aiming to catch up with AI rivals while prioritizing privacy protection.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Today, Apple typically trains AI models using synthetic data — information that’s meant to mimic real-world inputs without any personal details. But that synthetic information isn’t always representative of actual customer data, making it harder for its AI systems to work properly.
The new approach will address that problem while ensuring that user data remains on customers’ devices and isn’t directly used to train AI models. The idea is to help Apple catch up with competitors such as OpenAI and Alphabet Inc., which have fewer privacy restrictions.
The technology works like this: It takes the synthetic data that Apple has created and compares it to a recent sample of user emails within the iPhone, iPad and Mac email app. By using actual emails to check the fake inputs, Apple can then determine which items within its synthetic dataset are most in line with real-world messages.
These insights will help the company improve text-related features in its Apple Intelligence platform, such as summaries in notifications, the ability to synthesize thoughts in its Writing Tools, and recaps of user messages.
Large language models are the technology at the heart of modern AI, and they power the features in Apple Intelligence, which the company released last year. In addition to using synthetic data, Apple has trained its models with information it licensed from third parties or found by scanning the open internet.
MacDailyNews Take: The company will roll out the new data-collection system in its iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, and macOS 15.5 operating systems, all of which are currently in beta.
Read more in Apple’s white paper, “Understanding Aggregate Trends for Apple Intelligence Using Differential Privacy,” here.
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