Apple recently shared the first “real-world example” of its new Image Playgrounda feature coming with Apple Intelligence that lets you create cartoon-style illustrations from simple text. The image was created by Apple’s senior vice president of software, Craig Federighifor his wife, on the occasion of their dog Bailey’s birthday.
In the photo, Bailey is wearing a party hat and smiling in front of a birthday cake. Apple shared this image with Wiredwhich applies a watermark to all images generated by artificial intelligence, as part of its editorial policy. Images created with Image Playground They also include EXIF metadata that clearly indicates their origin, a detail similar to that of photos edited with the new tool Clean Up present in the Photos app with iOS 18.1.
What does Image Playground offer?
Apple describes Image Playground as a “fun” feature that lets you produce original images in seconds right within apps. Users can create a new image based on a text description, suggested concepts, or even a photo from the Photos app library. Once generated, the image can be styled and adapted for, say, a thread in Messages, a table in Freeform, or a presentation in Keynote.
Apple plans to release Image Playground and the function Genmoji to create custom emojis, with the update iOS 18.2probably expected for December. However, already with iOS 18.1 – coming in October – will introduce some of the first features of Apple Intelligencesuch as auto-composing tools and notification summaries. The Messages app will receive automatic reply suggestions, and there will also be a feature to transcribe phone calls. In addition, the aforementioned Clean Up will improve your Photos app experience by allowing you to quickly remove unwanted elements from your images.
This first look at Image Playground looks promising. The ability to generate custom images directly from the apps we already use every day could change mobile creativity, especially for those working with presentations or social media.
Craig Federighi’s words on Apple Intelligence
During an interview with Wired, Craig Federighi revealed that the PCC servers for Apple Intelligence were designed to be “barebones” at the hardware level, a key choice to ensure user privacy.
Federighi explained how Apple’s system works in three phases when it comes to managing data related to Apple Intelligence:
- Local processing: whenever possible, data processing takes place directly on the iPhone, without any data being sent to servers.
- Server Apple: If processing requires more computing power, Apple’s servers come into play.
- Request for consent: If Apple servers cannot provide the necessary help, users are asked for permission to use third-party tools, such as ChatGPT.
This approach represents a cornerstone of Apple’s philosophy, which aims to ensure maximum protection of personal data, preventing user information from ending up in external hands.
A key element of privacy protection is the simplicity of Private Cloud Compute servers. As Federighi pointed out, these servers are intentionally “essential” from a hardware point of view. For example, they do not include permanent storageso they can’t store data long-term. It’s hard to imagine a data center without hard drives or SSDs to save data, but that’s exactly what Apple has created.
I PCC servers use a system of encryption keys that regenerates at each reboot. Once shut down, the servers lose all previously processed data, making recovery impossible. This approach ensures that the processed data is permanently deleted after each session, with no chance of it being accidentally stored.
A delicate aspect, especially with regards to the AI language models (like those used by ChatGPT), is that the data must be readable by servers to perform the necessary operations. However, Apple has adopted an innovative solution that maintains high security standards without compromising user privacy.
Federighi explained that while the data cannot be completely end-to-end encrypted during the processing, Apple has developed a double protection:
- Tools that could allow an administrator or hacker to access data (such as load balancers and data loggers) are located outside the protected area.
- The absence of persistent storage ensures that once the response is sent to the device, the data is immediately deleted, with no possibility of recovery.
Apple has made a truly unique step forward in the security sector: anyone, even outside the company, can verify the functioning of the PCC servers. Every PCC server in production is publicly available for inspection, providing unprecedented transparency. Every server image is recorded in a cryptographic attestation logmaking it impossible for Apple to put a server into production without tracking it.
This approach also ensures that unauthorized servers cannot be used to process user data. iPhones will reject any server not registered in the transparency system.
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Source: www.iphoneitalia.com
