In the past, Apple has been very firm about not collecting data from its users, but now that data is required from users in order to help facilitate AI and make it smarter and more aware about its users, Apple wants its customers to know that this is completely opt-in in a move that they are calling “Differential Privacy”.
This was actually announced at WWDC but the company fell short of providing details about it then. However a report from Recode has helped to clear up certain things, like in what cases will differential privacy be applied to. According to Apple, there are four instances in which will require differential privacy.
This includes new words that users add to their local dictionaries, emojis typed by the user so that Apple will know how to suggest emojis in the future, deep links used inside of apps, and lookup hints within notes. Like we said, all of this is only possible with the user’s consent and it will be opt-in by default, meaning that right off the bat users can choose whether they want this to happen instead of having to disable it manually (like deciding whether to turn on/off location services during the setup of iOS).
Apple isn’t the first company to apply differential privacy, but it will be the first for the company.