If you hate the idea of using your information to train an AI, you’ll love this minor but important change Apple made to the iOS App Store.
The company told app developers, “You must clearly disclose where personal data will be shared with third parties, including third-party AI” — adding that all apps “must obtain explicit permission before doing so.”
The updated language – Apple’s first guidance on third-party AI – is part of a document called App Review Guidelines. And lest the name fool you, the introduction makes clear that following these guidelines is pretty much mandatory.
Apple later told developers in guidelines, “We will reject apps for any content or behavior that we think crosses the line.” “Which line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court judge once said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’ “And we think you’ll know it too when you go through it.”
The update, which was released last week, is the first time that AI is also mentioned in the guidelines. Apple under the leadership of CEO Tim Cook has been highly skeptical about AI, being slow to include AI features in Siri, and sometimes hesitant to even use the letters “AI”; Cook has liked to use the similar term “machine learning” in previous keynote speeches.
mashable light speed
Sourcing data to train AI models has become one of the most legally controversial activities in Silicon Valley. (Disclosure: Mashable’s parent company Ziff Davis filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)
And even Apple, the AI laggard that is reportedly soon going to use Google Gemini to power Siri, is not immune.
Two lawsuits were filed last month alleging that Apple improperly used other people’s work for its AI training. In separate filings, two neuroscientists and two authors said Cook’s company had used data from “shadow libraries,” or pirated content available online.
Although Apple’s response remains to be seen, the legal landscape does not look that promising for the company. AI giant Anthropic settled a class-action lawsuit over its use of shadow libraries for $1.5 billion in September.
But at least Apple can now legitimately claim to protect its users from AI data-scraping within its apps.