The international deployment of Apple Intelligence is a headache for Apple. The AI functions — notification summaries, writing assistance tools, image generation, etc. — are only available in English, and they are even completely blocked in the EU. It is however possible to activate them, at the cost of a manipulation that can be annoying on a daily basis.
A delicate balance between confidentiality and data exploitation
Courage! These features will be launched on the old continent next April on iPhone and iPad, and probably in French (on Mac, they are already available without tinkering, but only in English). Apple has cleared up the legal uncertainties related to the DMA with the European authorities.
While things seem to be improving in Europe, Apple still has to untangle the thorny case of China, where the manufacturer is not only rubbing shoulders with the administration but also with technical difficulties. AI models used in China must indeed respect specific security, confidentiality and content commitments (the famous censorship), and they must be validated by the regulator.
In theory, the country does not prohibit the presence of foreign AI models, but in practice the examination and authorization of these models is not a priority of the administration. This is why Apple is working with the giant Baidu to integrate its own model, Ernie 4.0, into the heart of Apple Intelligence according to the site The Information. Baidu is a long-standing partner: it has been the default search engine for Safari in China since 2012, and for Siri since 2015.
At present, however, the responses provided by this model to user queries are not considered good enough. Baidu’s model is based solely on the data used to train it, while Apple wants to integrate user-specific data (app usage, message history, etc.) to provide personalized responses. Baidu’s restaurant recommendations, for example, are not as relevant as those that a Siri could make fueling Apple’s AI model.
Baidu is ready to make the necessary investments to allocate more resources to the development of Apple Intelligence in China. But it will also have to resolve another important issue: the exploitation of user data. Baidu would like to harvest and analyze data from Apple Intelligence users to improve and personalize its model’s responses. But the manufacturer’s privacy policy prohibits the collection of this type of information…
For Apple, it is imperative to offer Apple Intelligence in China to support struggling iPhone sales, even if it is not a guaranteed recipe for success. Despite integrating AI functions into its Galaxy S24, Samsung (which also relies on Baidu models in China) has not exactly had resounding success: the Korean manufacturer's market share even declined after the launch of these smartphones, going from 0.8% in January to 0.7% the following month.
Source: The Information
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