Developers annoyed: Apple apparently wants to feed AI with bug reports

AI training with bug reports: Apple wants to use bug reports submitted by developers to improve Apple Intelligence – although such reports and system logs can easily contain personal and sensitive data, as the manufacturer itself admits. A dialog that appears before submitting error reports in Apple's Feedback Assistant draws attention to this new application for training AI models, as one developer recently noted. There is no opt-out option other than not submitting the bug report in the first place.

Bug reports only with AI training consent?

He had wanted to report a serious bug to Apple and after attaching his system diagnostics data, the corresponding warning dialog appeared, explained the developer @cocoafrog, who had previously worked on developer tools at the company himself. This kind of blank consent for AI training is "extremely shitty behavior" – after all, the developer is voluntarily transmitting sensitive data to help Apple with bug fixes.

Other iOS developers also reacted to the Mastodon posting with anger and clear rejection. PCalc developer James Thomson, for example, wrote that he would probably not report any more bugs to Apple.

Apple's bug reporting system has a bad reputation

Apple's bug reporting procedure already has a miserable reputation among developers. The system is largely regarded as a "black hole"; even painstakingly documented bug reports often receive no feedback from the manufacturer. Developers also report of sometimes pointless queries or requests for diagnostic data that have long since been transmitted. In the recent past, individual developers have sometimes tried to draw attention to the problem by calling for a boycott; some developers have probably long since saved themselves the (unpaid) work of reporting bugs to Apple in the first place. Do we really need more reasons for developers to stop submitting bug reports, says @cocoafrog.

Apple is taking an increasingly aggressive approach to improving Apple Intelligence: Using iPhone analytics data, the company now wants to identify trends from "real user data" to further develop its AI models. Data protection technology is intended to prevent conclusions being drawn about individual users and the use of sensitive data.

(lbe)