Apple Rolls Out Privacy-Sensitive Artificial Intelligence

On Monday Apple showed off a string of new iPhone features powered by recent advances in artificial intelligence--many of them aping ones already launched by rival Google. But Apple's announcements of features like facial recognition or software that knows what's in your photos, made during its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, were distinct in how much they emphasized privacy. Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, repeatedly stated that machine-learning algorithms able to understand personal data such as photos are being used only within the confines of a person's iPhone, not on Apple's cloud servers. "We believe you should have great features and great privacy," he said. A new version of Apple's Photos app, coming this fall with a new version of Apple's mobile operating system, will use facial recognition to maintain virtual albums of snaps containing people you frequently photograph.