Elon Musk uses X to express his complaints about Apple and the OpenAI partnership. This is why

Elon Musk, who has threatened to ban his employees from using Apple devices in the companies he manages, stated in a June 10 post on X that he is no longer a fan of the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers because he has concerns about security in regarding whether Apple’s new partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, will protect users’ personal data.

But the situation that prompted Musk – one of the world’s richest men, CEO of X, head of a startup developing a ChatGPT rival called Grok, and co-founder of OpenAI, a company he is now suing – may be more complicated than just security concerns. Musk, who has a reputation for brawling, is currently being criticized by members of his fact-checking community on social media, saying his claims are inaccurate and misleading.

Here’s what happened: After Apple CEO Tim Cook and his team took the stage at the company’s developer conference on Monday and announced that generative AI features would be made available to iPhone, iPad and Mac users in future software releases operating system this fall, including a deal giving Apple users access to Gen. OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, Musk made his threat.

“If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, Apple devices will be banned from my companies.” On Monday, Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This is an unacceptable security breach.

In his tweets, he also said that visitors to his companies, which include Tesla, X, chatbot developer xAI, tunneling startup Boring Company and rocket maker SpaceX, will have to “check their Apple devices at the door where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.” Faraday cages are enclosures that protect everything inside them from electromagnetic fields.

However, he did not provide any evidence to support his speculations about potential security threats. Instead, Musk, in another post on Monday, dissed Apple for signing a contract with a third-party developer of large language models (LLMs) that enable generative AI functionality. He also said he might make his own phone to “combat this problem,” again without detailing what it is.

“It is patently absurd that Apple is not smart enough to create its own AI, yet is somehow able to ensure that OpenAI will protect your security and privacy,” Musk wrote. “Apple has no idea what’s actually going on when it gives your data to OpenAI. They sell you out over time.”

Musk, who has sought to portray himself as a defender of users, also made no mention of his legal problems with OpenAI, which were detailed in his February lawsuit. The lawsuit claims that the San Francisco-based startup, including CEO Sam Altman, abandoned its founding mission of developing artificial intelligence that would benefit humanity in favor of the pursuit of profit.

In response, OpenAI, in a lengthy March 5 blog post, disputed Musk’s narrative and said the billionaire investor was angry about his 2018 attempt to acquire OpenAI, which included his requests to become CEO and majority shareholder in order to could transform it into a ‘for-profit entity’ was rejected.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on ChatGPT’s integration with “Apple Intelligence” – the name comes from its approach to adding generative AI-based features to all hardware and software. These features include the ability to transcribe or summarize notes, as well as Siri’s improved ability to understand the context of conversations.

Apple also used WWDC to announce a partnership with OpenAI, saying users can access ChatGPT through Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, and in new writing tools that will proofread your writing, rewrite texts in a variety of styles, and quickly summarize long passages text.

See also: Apple says artificial intelligence sets a “new standard” for privacy and is inviting security experts to test it

During its WWDC keynote, Apple spoke at length about the security and privacy aspects of its artificial intelligence systems, including what it calls Private Cloud Compute for managing communications between personal devices and remote Apple servers running in the cloud.

“Built-in privacy protections for users accessing ChatGPT – their IP addresses are hidden and OpenAI does not store requests,” Apple said in a press release.

The iPhone maker said it expects ChatGPT to be integrated into new software for its iPhone, iPad and Mac computers this fall. ChatGPT integration is an optional feature, the company said, showing that users can choose to use the OpenAI chatbot on their website. Apple says its devices won’t collect personal data, but they will be aware of it.

The iPhone maker has championed privacy as a core value in the design of products and services and said Apple Intelligence will set a “new standard for privacy in artificial intelligence.” To help achieve this, Apple says some AI tasks will be processed on-device, while more complex requests will be routed to the cloud in data centers equipped with Apple-made chips. In both cases, “data is not stored or shared with Apple and is only used to fulfill user requests, and independent experts can verify this privacy,” the company said.

Fact checkers at X also pointed out that Musk’s posts in which he called the Apple-OpenAI partnership “creepy spyware” were not factually accurate, Forbes noted. “Users, citing Apple’s introduction of Apple Intelligence models, said Musk’s claim that the company will hand over data to OpenAI is misleading because Apple has developed its own artificial intelligence systems that will run on-device or locally and will use “private cloud”

In another community note, as reported by Forbes, fact-checkers wrote that Musk “misrepresents what was actually announced” because “Apple Intelligence is an Apple creation” and access to ChatGPT “is completely separate and user-controlled.”