Private Cloud Compute

I watched the Apple WWDC 2024 keynote again, and one of the sections that went by pretty quickly was the reference to Private Cloud Compute, or PCC. For some of Apple’s AI initiative, they will need to send your data to the cloud. The explanation wasn’t clear about what sorts of factors come into play when necessary. Hopefully, they disclose more in the future. Regardless, Apple has built its own server farm using Apple silicon to do that processing. According to Craig Federighi, they will use the data, send back a response, and then cryptographically destroy the data after processing.

Theoretically, Apple will never be able to know what you did or asked for. This sounds like a tremendous amount of work, and I’m unaware of any other AI provider doing it. It’s also exactly the kind of thing I would like to see Apple do. The entire discussion of PCC was rather short in the keynote, but I expect Apple will disclose more as we get closer to seeing the Apple Intelligence betas.