Apple’s AI Transparency at Risk Amid Growing Privacy and Data Scrutiny

Tech giant Apple might be facing a lot more scrutiny from its shareholders regarding AI practices.

The news comes after a filing was made by the Cupertino firm with the American Securities and Exchange Commission. The date for the filing comes before the company’s next yearly Shareholder Meeting which will take place next month.

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) put out a new proposal that urged the iPhone maker to be more transparent about how it takes on and uses external information for the sake of its AI training. This includes any legal risks about data privacy and users’ copyrights.

It’s all very interesting as the company is known for aligning with its own privacy-centered policies. The proposal asks that the company share the document highlighting all AI data acquisition methods, its ethics on the subject, and all policies related to the matter.

To be more specific, they want to know more about the risks attached to improperly getting data for training its AI models. Similarly, they want more transparency about privacy safeguards for creating AI, and also the steps taken to make sure outputs are in compliance with legal standards.

The NLPC argued that Apple is a leading tech giant with a great reputation for users’ privacy rights. Therefore, it needs to set the bar high when it comes down to AI principles. It also notes how arch-rivals in the industry like Google, Meta, and OpenAI are currently facing legal implications over data scraping for AI model training.
There was nothing hidden including how Apple was accused of putting on a privacy-friendly status in front of the world to get more fame and recognition. However, the money it makes from its massive user base is certainly something that might hinder the firm from doing exactly what it promises. Therefore, Apple was accused of outsourcing all unethical practices to different parties.

For instance, the firm had a longstanding deal with Alphabet which is one of its top competitors in the industry. This would make Google the leading search algorithm across all of the company’s products. The deal stands at a whopping $25 billion. Therefore, such deals not only warrant further investigation, they also raise questions on how Google can collect huge sums of data belonging to Apple’s user base.

It’s already struck a massive deal with OpenAI and now hopes to do the same with Meta which is already a leading name when it comes down to violating privacy rights.

So what does all of this mean for the iPhone maker? After all, it’s definitely adopted a more controlled position in the world of AI than other rivals in the same sector. It has even marketed its own private cloud model and focused more on privacy-centered machine learning instead of following others in designing AI models based on the usual cloud. Still, seeing it rely heavily on partnerships such as OpenAI now and Google in the future definitely gives rise to more scrutiny.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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