Apple has made no secret that they are a very privacy-centric business, where they would never use a customer’s information for profit. If you’re looking for additional proof that Apple means what they say, a report from The Information (via 9to5Mac) has revealed that the company might have acquired a company by the name of Silk Labs.
For those who are unfamiliar with Silk Labs, they are a startup founded in 2015 by former Mozilla employees, Andreas Gal, Chris Jones and Michael Vines. The startup is a privacy-focused startup that develops AI, where the goal is developing AI that can run locally on a device as opposed to the cloud.
What this means for consumers is that instead of your questions to Siri being parsed at a remote server in a different state or country, it will be done on your phone which means that it reduces the chances of someone else, including Apple themselves, from potentially listening in or having your data compromised.
In fact it was just not too long ago that Apple filed a patent for a version of Siri that could work offline which would be similar to what this acquisition could help Apple achieve. Apple has not commented on their acquisition, but that’s pretty normal and we doubt that we would get more than their boilerplate statement.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Privacy.