How does Apple send your data to its AI cloud servers? Very carefully, he says.

For years, Apple has touted privacy as its main advantage over competitors like Google and Microsoft. Instead of relying on cloud processing to enhance or organize your images, which requires sending your photos to Google’s servers, Apple handles these tasks directly on your device. But with the advent of Apple Intelligence, the company’s vision for artificial intelligence, the company is moving out of its comfort zone with “Private Cloud Compute”. It says “private” right in the name, so it must be secure, RIGHT?

Although Apple’s AI will run some models locally, it will occasionally need to send data to Apple’s servers for complex queries. So how does the company reconcile this with its previous security stance?

According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, the company is very careful about how it sends your data to its servers. “You put a lot of trust in the cloud… with Private Cloud Compute, the stakes are even higher,” he said in a conversation at WWDC 2024 with Apple’s head of AI, John Giannandrea, and YouTube influencer iJustine.

During the WWDC keynote, Federighi showed how Apple’s AI could help him reschedule a meeting and determine whether he could still attend his daughter’s dance recital. Apple AI was able to determine who her daughter actually was, where her event was taking place, and the estimated travel time from her meeting.

Federighi says Apple doesn’t send all your data to the cloud, but only downloads the most important information relevant to your Apple AI query. Additionally, your server request is anonymous, as it uses the same IP masking technology as iCloud Private Relay. Federighi also noted that Apple’s cloud servers do not have permanent storage and do not have the ability to keep logs.

To make things even more secure, Federighi says Private Cloud Compute servers run software with published images that security researchers can audit. Apple Intelligence devices can only communicate with servers running these approved images. If changes are made to the servers, local devices will also need to be updated to see them.

This process may be a bit restrictive, but that’s precisely the point. Federighi calls this “a breakthrough” in the level of confidence you can have with server computing. “It is essential that you do not know anyone, neither Apple nor anyone else, who can access the information used to process your request,” he said.