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Comment by Me1000 | Hacker News Reader

They prompt you before they send your data to OpenAI, but it's clear that they prompt you before they send it to Apple's servers (maybe they do and I missed it?). And their promise that their servers are secure because it's all written in Swift is laughable.

Edit:

This line from the keynote is also suspect: "And just like your iPhone , independent experts can inspect the code that runs on the servers to verify this privacy promise.".

First off, do "independent experts" actually have access to closed source iOS code? If so we already have evidence that this is sufficient (https://www.macrumors.com/2024/05/15/ios-17-5-bug-deleted-ph...).

The actual standard for privacy and security is open source software, anything short of that is just marketing buzz. Every company has an incentive to not leak data, but data leaks still happen.

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They're promising to go farther than that.

>> Independent experts can inspect the code that runs on Apple silicon servers to verify privacy, and Private Cloud Compute cryptographically ensures that iPhone, iPad, and Mac do not talk to a server unless its software has been publicly logged for inspection. Apple Intelligence with Private Cloud Compute sets a new standard for privacy in AI, unlocking intelligence users can trust.

That promise made my ears perk up. If it actually stands up to scrutiny, it's pretty damn cool.

I look at things like that from a revenue/strategic perspective.

If Apple says it, do they have any disincentives to deliver? Not really. Their ad business is still relatively small, and already architected around privacy.

If someone who derives most of their revenue from targeted ads says it? Yes. Implementing it directly negatively impacts their primary revenue stream.

IMHO, the strategic genius of Apple's "privacy" positioning has been that it doesn't matter to them. It might make things more inconvenient technically, but it doesn't impact their revenue model, in stark contrast to their competitors.

Their disincentive to delivering it is that it's not actually possible.

It's certainly possible through remote attestation of software. This is basically DRM on servers (i.e., the data is not decrypted on the server unless the server stack is cryptographically attested to match some trusted configuration).

That requires trusting that the attestation hardware does what it says it does, and that the larger hardware system around it isn't subject to invasion. Those requirements mean that your assurance is no longer entirely cryptographic. And, by the way, Apple apparently plans to be building the hardware.

It could be a very large practical increase in assurance, but it's not what they're saying it is.

I haven't read all the marketing verbage yet, but even 'Our cloud AI servers are hardware-locked and runtime-checked to only run openly auditable software' is a huge step forward, IMHO.

It's a decent minimum bar that other companies should also be aiming for.

Edit: ref https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

If you want the details: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

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