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

iOS 18

Here Are Apple's Full Release Notes for iOS 18.2

Thursday December 5, 2024 11:48 am PST by
Apple seeded the release candidate version of iOS 18.2 today, which means it's going to see a public launch imminently. Release candidates represent the final version of new software that will be provided to the public should no last minute bugs be found, and Apple includes release notes with the RC launch. The iOS 18.2 release notes provide a look at all of the new features that are coming...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature

iPhone 17 'Air' Expected to Be ~2mm Thinner Than iPhone 16 Pro

Friday December 6, 2024 4:07 pm PST by
In 2025, Apple is planning to debut a thinner version of the iPhone that will be sold alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. This iPhone 17 "Air" will be about two millimeters thinner than the current iPhone 16 Pro, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The iPhone 16 Pro is 8.25mm thick, so an iPhone 17 that is 2mm thinner would come in at around 6.25mm. At 6.25mm,...
New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

20 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Friday December 6, 2024 4:42 am PST by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls...
iPhone 14 Pro Display Two Times Brighter Feature

Every Display Upgrade Rumored for Apple's iPhone 17

Friday December 6, 2024 5:14 am PST by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 lineup may bring some of the most significant display improvements we've seen in recent years. While the iPhone 17 series isn't expected until late 2025, multiple rumors suggest Apple is working on substantial screen upgrades across its entire smartphone range. From enhanced refresh rates to advanced materials and improved power efficiency, these display...
airpods pro 2 gradient

AirPods Pro 3 Expected Next Year: Here's What We Know

Thursday November 28, 2024 3:30 am PST by
Despite being released over two years ago, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 continue to dominate the wireless earbud market. However, with the AirPods Pro 3 expected to launch sometime in 2025, anyone thinking of buying Apple's premium earbuds may be wondering if the next generation is worth holding out for. Apart from their audio and noise-canceling performance, which are generally regarded as...
iCloud General Feature

Apple Defeats Lawsuit Related to iCloud's Measly 5GB of Free Storage

Friday December 6, 2024 7:43 am PST by
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week upheld a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that Apple illegally deceived customers into paying for iCloud storage, according to a court filing. The decision was reported by Law360. The lawsuit alleged that Apple deceived customers into purchasing iCloud-enabled devices by misleading customers into believing that they can...
surface studio 4

Microsoft Discontinues iMac Rival Surface Studio 2+

Friday December 6, 2024 6:30 am PST by
Microsoft has discontinued its Surface Studio 2+, marking the end of the company's only direct competitor to Apple's iMac, leaving a gap in the Windows ecosystem for high-end all-in-one PCs. Microsoft has confirmed to Windows Central that it has ended production of the Surface Studio 2+, a premium all-in-one desktop designed for creative professionals. With remaining stock now limited to...
open ai logo

OpenAI Launches $200/Month ChatGPT Pro Plan

Thursday December 5, 2024 4:19 pm PST by
OpenAI today announced the launch of ChatGPT Pro, a $200 per month subscription service that provides unlimited access to OpenAI o1, the company's newest and most advanced large language model. The plan includes unlimited use of OpenAI o1, o1-mini, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice, along with o1 pro mode, an o1 version that uses more compute to provide better answers to the hardest problems. In...

Top Rated Comments

sniffies Avatar
21 weeks 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
21 weeks ago
Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied - Sir Humphrey (Yes, Minister)
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
foobarbaz Avatar
21 weeks 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
21 weeks 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
21 weeks 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
21 weeks 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)