Apple has rejected reports of training Apple Intelligence and its AI model on YouTube videos without the creators’ consent. The company says OpenELM, its open language model, does not power Apple Intelligence.
Instead, it created OpenELM as a way to contribute to the development of open source large language models.
Apple denies using YouTube videos for training Apple Intelligence
In a report published on July 16, WIRED claimed, based on an investigation by Proof News, that Apple, Nvidia and other tech giants used thousands of YouTube videos to train their AI models. This included videos from popular creators like MKBHD, PewDiePie, and John Oliver — all without their consent.
They did this using video subtitles despite YouTube rules prohibiting content harvesting and the use of its hosted materials for AI training. None of the companies directly participated in the act, though. A non-profit called EleutherAI supplied the content for training AI models.
Apple has clarified the situation in a statement to AppleInsider. The company says OpenELM does not power any of Apple’s intelligence features. Additionally, the open language model is intended solely for research purposes and not for commercial use. The company also does not plan on building a new OpenELM model in the future.
Apple claims to have used licensed or publicly available data for its AI model
The Cupertino giant repeatedly reiterated in its research paper that it trains its foundation models on licensed data and “publicly available data” collected by its web crawler, AppleBot. It also never uses personally identifying information to train its foundation models. All such data are removed through filters.
Previous reports indicate that Apple paid millions of dollars to license data to train its AI model. The company reportedly paid $25-$50 million to license Shutterstock’s massive image and video library.
Despite announcing Apple Intelligence at WWDC24 and iOS 18’s public beta release, Apple has yet to provide access to its suite of AI tools. This should change in the coming weeks.
Even then, all Apple Intelligence features won’t arrive with iOS 18’s debut this September. Instead, the company will roll some out later in the year or early 2025.
