Apple’s Plan to Protect Privacy With AI: Putting Cloud Data in a Black Box

When Apple executives appear at its annual developer conference in mid-June, they are expected to unveil details of how it will integrate AI in its Siri virtual assistant and other products. One of the big questions is how it will do so while still honoring its promises to protect the personal data of its users.

The answer? Apple plans to process data from AI applications in a virtual black box, making it impossible for its employees to access it, according to four former Apple employees who worked on the project. Over the past three years, the company has been working on a secret project, known internally as Apple Chips in Data Centers or ACDC, that would allow for such black box processing. Its approach is similar in concept to confidential computing, an industry term that means the data is kept private even while it’s being processed.