According to a press release issued FridayappleAlready signedWhite House's voluntary commitment to developing safe, reliable and trustworthy AI. The move signals that Apple will soon bring its generative AI productApple Intelligenceintroduced into its core products for Apple's 2 billion users.
In July 2023, Apple, along with 15 other tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, pledged to abide by the White House's ground rules for generative AI. Although Apple did not reveal at the time that it was incorporating AI technology into theiOS's specific plans, but at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, Apple made it clear that it would be fully investing in the field of generative AI, starting with working with partners to embed ChatGPT in the iPhone.
Apple's voluntary commitment to the White House, while limited in its binding nature, is its first step in the field of artificial intelligence. The White House said it was a "first step" for Apple and other companies to develop safe, reliable and trustworthy AI. It will be closely followed by President Biden's AI executive order issued in October, and several bills are currently under consideration in federal and state legislatures to better regulate AI models.
Under the commitment, AI companies will red-team AI models prior to public release and share this information with the public. In addition, the company is required to keep unpublished AI model weights confidential and to study them in a secure environment with limited access to the model weights. Finally, the Company agrees to develop content labeling systems, such as watermarks, to help users distinguish between AI-generated content and non-AI-generated content.
The U.S. Department of Commerce says it will soon release a report on the potential benefits, risks and impacts of open source-based models. Open source AI is becoming a politically charged regulatory battleground. Some camps want to limit the accessibility of model weights for powerful AI models on security grounds, but this could limit the growth of AI startups and research ecosystems. The White House's stance on this could have a significant impact on the AI industry as a whole.
The White House also noted that federal agencies have made significant progress on their mandates under the October executive order. To date, federal agencies have recruited more than 200 AI-related personnel, granted access to computing resources to more than 80 research teams, and released several frameworks for developing AI.