Apple Intelligence Not Trained on YouTube Content, Says Apple

Apple on Thursday addressed concerns about its use of AI training data, following an investigation that revealed Apple, along with other major tech companies, had used YouTube subtitles to train their artificial intelligence models.

Apple Intelligence General Feature
The investigation by Wired earlier this week reported that over 170,000 videos from popular content creators were part of a dataset used to train AI models. Apple specifically used this dataset in the development of its open-source OpenELM models, which were made public in April.

However, Apple has now confirmed to 9to5Mac that OpenELM does not power any of its AI or machine learning features, including the company's Apple Intelligence system. Apple clarified that OpenELM was created solely for research purposes, with the aim of advancing open-source large language model development.

On releasing OpenELM on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code, Apple researchers described it as a "state-of-the-art open language model" that had been designed to "empower and enrich the open research community." The model is also available through Apple's Machine Learning Research website. Apple has stated that it has no plans to develop new versions of the OpenELM model.

The company emphasized that since OpenELM is not integrated into ‌Apple Intelligence‌, the "YouTube Subtitles" dataset is not being used to power any of its commercial AI features. Apple reiterated its previous statement that ‌Apple Intelligence‌ models are trained on "licensed data, including data selected to enhance specific features, as well as publicly available data collected by our web-crawler."

The Wired report detailed how companies including Apple, Anthropic, and NVIDIA had used the "YouTube Subtitles" dataset for AI model training. This dataset is part of a larger collection known as "The Pile," which is compiled by the non-profit organization EleutherAI.

Popular Stories

iphone 16 display

iPhone 17's Scratch Resistant Anti-Reflective Display Coating Canceled

Monday April 28, 2025 12:48 pm PDT by
Apple may have canceled the super scratch resistant anti-reflective display coating that it planned to use for the iPhone 17 Pro models, according to a source with reliable information that spoke to MacRumors. Last spring, Weibo leaker Instant Digital suggested Apple was working on a new anti-reflective display layer that was more scratch resistant than the Ceramic Shield. We haven't heard...
iPhone 17 Air Pastel Feature

iPhone 17 Reaches Key Milestone Ahead of Mass Production

Monday April 28, 2025 8:44 am PDT by
Apple has completed Engineering Validation Testing (EVT) for at least one iPhone 17 model, according to a paywalled preview of an upcoming DigiTimes report. iPhone 17 Air mockup based on rumored design The EVT stage involves Apple testing iPhone 17 prototypes to ensure the hardware works as expected. There are still DVT (Design Validation Test) and PVT (Production Validation Test) stages to...
Beyond iPhone 13 Better Blue

20th Anniversary iPhone Likely to Be Made in China Due to 'Extraordinarily Complex' Design

Monday April 28, 2025 4:29 am PDT by
Apple will likely manufacture its 20th anniversary iPhone models in China, despite broader efforts to shift production to India, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In 2027, Apple is planning a "major shake-up" for the iPhone lineup to mark two decades since the original model launched. Gurman's previous reporting indicates the company will introduce a foldable iPhone alongside a "bold"...
apple watch ultra yellow

What's Next for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3

Friday April 25, 2025 2:44 pm PDT by
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too. 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 Apple didn't update the...
iphone 17 air iphone 16 pro

iPhone 17 Air USB-C Port May Have This Unusual Design Quirk

Wednesday April 30, 2025 3:59 am PDT by
Apple is preparing to launch a dramatically thinner iPhone this September, and if recent leaks are anything to go by, the so-called iPhone 17 Air could boast one of the most radical design shifts in recent years. iPhone 17 Air dummy model alongside iPhone 16 Pro (credit: AppleTrack) At just 5.5mm thick (excluding a slightly raised camera bump), the 6.6-inch iPhone 17 Air is expected to become ...
iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 13 New Features

Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
iPhone 17 Pro on Desk Feature

All iPhone 17 Models Again Rumored to Feature 12GB of RAM

Tuesday April 29, 2025 3:36 am PDT by
All upcoming iPhone 17 models will come equipped with 12GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence, according to the Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station. The claim from the Chinese leaker, who has sources within Apple's supply chain, comes a few days after industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max will all be equipped with 12GB of RAM. ...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Tuesday April 29, 2025 1:30 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...

Top Rated Comments

sniffies Avatar
10 months ago
Thank god for that. Training on YouTube videos from popular content creators would render Apple Intelligence pretty unintelligent.
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Havalo Avatar
10 months ago
Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied - Sir Humphrey (Yes, Minister)
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
foobarbaz Avatar
10 months ago

Like a person, it could have been exposed to anything out in the wild and we don’t walk around with a list of references. But we treat this software differently to people… you wouldn’t let anyone off the street on your iPhone or laptop… similar goes for AI.
I think you're humanizing the AI too much. It's not a person searching knowledge "in the wild". It is a large file that has been created by a training algorithm which is given a lot of crawled data as the input. It doesn't learn anything outside of what its creators are passing along. And crucially, once training is complete, it's no longer acquiring knowledge. (Every interaction you have with it starts with a blank slate or explicit "context" given from your previous sessions/personal data.)

So the model's creators know absolutely what has been used to train it. They're generally just cagey about it, because they don't want to be sued once they admit whose copyrighted content they've used.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
peneaux Avatar
10 months ago

Thank god for that. Training on YouTube videos from popular content creators would render Apple Intelligence very unintelligent.
Unintelligent is a very polite way of saying garbage.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Fuzzball84 Avatar
10 months ago
How do we truly know what they have been trained on?

Like a person, it could have been exposed to anything out in the wild and we don’t walk around with a list of references. But we treat this software differently to people… you wouldn’t let anyone off the street on your iPhone or laptop… similar goes for AI.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
antiprotest Avatar
10 months ago
I believe Apple on this, because from all that we have heard this thing is going to be so delayed that at this point it hasn't been trained on ANY content.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)