What does the big AI deal between Apple and Google actually mean for privacy and security of iPhone user data? Google boss Sundar Pichai has now caused additional uncertainty: Google is now Apple’s “preferred cloud provider,” the CEO told financial analysts after the latest business figures were announced on Thursday night, without giving any further details.
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Pichai said he was pleased about the collaboration with the iPhone company and the joint development of “the next generation of Apple Foundation models based on Gemini technology.” Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler repeated the exact same wording a short time later, as can be seen from the transcript. The managers subsequently left an analyst’s query about the deal unanswered.
Google deal: Tim Cook also remains taciturn
After the deal was announced in January, Apple and Google emphasized in a joint statement that Apple Intelligence “continues to run on Apple devices and private cloud compute” and adheres to “Apple’s industry-leading data protection standards.” Siri was not mentioned separately. Apple boss Tim Cook also dodged questions from financial analysts at the end of January: “As far as the agreement with Google is concerned, we are not publishing any details about it,” Cook said briefly.
Currently, some Apple Intelligence language models run locally on devices, while certain requests are sent to a larger language model on Apple servers. Users don’t see any of this. Apple promises to only use this data in its Private Cloud Compute to implement the respective action and then delete it. They would not be further processed for AI training or any other purposes. Employees are never able to see this. However, end-to-end encryption is not used. Interactions with Siri have so far generally been transcribed and evaluated by Apple. Anyone who uses the ChatGPT integration in Siri sends their data to OpenAI’s servers.
Siri-Chatbot von iOS 27 in Google Cloud?
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According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the first version of the new Gemini-based Siri will run on Apple’s cloud infrastructure. However, for future AI functions in iOS 27 – including an expected Siri chatbot – the use of the Google Cloud is under discussion, wrote Gurman. Google also recently presented a solution based on private cloud computing; Whether this will be used for this, for example, remains an open question for the time being. Apple has long relied on Google as a cloud provider to host iCloud data.
(lbe)
