Apple Inc. will begin analyzing data on customers’ devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform, a move designed to safeguard user information while still helping it catch up with AI rivals.
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.
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The company will roll out the new system in an upcoming beta version of iOS and iPadOS 18.5 and macOS 15.5. A second beta test of those upcoming releases was provided to developers earlier on Monday.
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Already, the company has relied on a technology called differential privacy to help improve its Genmoji feature, which lets users create a custom emoji. It uses that system to “identify popular prompts and prompt patterns, while providing a mathematical guarantee that unique or rare prompts aren’t discovered,” the company said in the blog post.
The idea is to track how the model responds in situations where multiple users have made the same request — say, asking for a dinosaur carrying a briefcase — and improving the results in those cases.
The features are only for users who are opted in to device analytics and product improvement capabilities. Those options are managed in the Privacy and Security tab within the Settings app on the company’s devices.
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Source: Apple to Analyze User Data on Devices to Bolster AI Technology
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