{"slug": "apple-degrades-privacy-and-encryption-of-imessage-with-ai-integrations", "title": "Apple degrades privacy and encryption of iMessage with AI integrations", "summary": "Apple's integration of OpenAI's ChatGPT into iMessage degrades the messaging service's end-to-end encryption and privacy, allowing ChatGPT to access and process users' private messages on OpenAI/Microsoft servers in plain text, potentially without user consent, according to a post by Steve Moraco on X. The feature, which requires installation and permission clicks, enables ChatGPT to fetch messages from local caches, and default settings may allow this data to be used for AI training, raising concerns about permanent retention and government access.", "body_md": "I’m actually pretty upset Apple allowed this. While the feature is cool, the technical functionality that enables it is not cool.\nIf I was Tim Apple, OAI would be temporarily banned from the App Store until this is reversed, and here’s why:\nI use iMessage because it’s quantum encrypted, with server keys I can own. Local caches are on devices that are encrypted with my passwords, not apples keys.\nThis makes it and computationally and legally impossible for anyone else to access chat history but the people I trust and directly communicated with.\nBut *now* the copies of my messages from years ago on *anyones* laptop in what is *supposed* to be an encrypted-at-rest local cache only can now be fetched directly by chatgpt without my permission or even knowledge and stored and processed in plain text forever on openai / Microsoft servers unencrypted and requested by any government entity at a moments notice without my knowledge and openai/Microsoft legally have to provide that, in federally enforced total secrecy. And they’re never legally allowed to admit they do it.\nAND because of default chatgpt settings most people haven’t bothered to turn off, all those private texts can now be used for training and will end up in the weights of future models, so all future AI models will permanently know all of our private lives as a part of the weights, immortalized forever as training checkpoints.\nTotal architecture abandonment and user trust betrayal on Apples part. This should be the most viral story of 2026 by 100x. The permanent end of private communication in the US.\n\n# steve on X: \"I’m actually pretty upset Apple allowed this. While the feature is cool, the technical functionality that enables it is not cool. If I was Tim Apple, OAI would be temporarily banned from the App Store until this is reversed, and here’s why: I use iMessage because it’s quantum\"\n\n- for those of you who think I’m exaggerating, imagine when this starts happening about your private life from 10 years ago rather than your public blog posts in gpt-6Crazy thing happened with\n[AskDATA.co](http://AskDATA.co)today. Still in shock. I was trouble shooting with a customer on zoom and he had just gotten his personal data file in and working for the first time, he asked it to tell him a story (GPT3.5) to test out memory functions (longlots of diversity of technical literacy in the comments. Thankful this picked up and resonated with so many, hopefully there will now be a discussion about how we properly prompt all parties in a given chat history before submitting their information for training and/or serverMy primary ask is lets please have Apple, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and SpaceXAI post “what we’ve never done” pages like this as asap as possible[cloudflare.com/transparency/](https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/)And then ASK people *before* submitting their information their private information!\"this is rich coming from the guy who built the iOS shortcut that made you press \"allow all\" 200 times to do anything with ChatGPT on your phone in 2023!!! talk about a hot take!\"Adding this comment from a lawyer on another thread because my god I didn’t even think of that yikesReplying to[@SteveMoraco](https://x.com/SteveMoraco)and[@ChatGPT](https://x.com/ChatGPT)Well said. Agreed completely. Still trying to wrap my head around this decision. Makes zero sense. So let’s suppose somebody from, I don’t know, 2009, whom I don’t even know anymore, decides to enable this on their end. Unbeknownst to me, and without my approval — i.e., it’s afor the inevitable community note writers who will have to parse my awful typos and run on sentences above, a few details so the community note can be as helpful and accurate as possible: - I hope it’s obvious “the end of privacy” comment at the end was tongue in cheek, but - 1. You have to install the plugin, it's not on by default... then you have to click through several permissions interstitials. 2. It's post quantum safe, not quantum encryption.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/apple-degrades-privacy-and-encryption-of-imessage-with-ai-integrations", "canonical_source": "https://twitter.com/stevemoraco/status/2091194172917338520", "published_at": "2026-08-23 01:41:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-23 02:13:29.847838+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Apple", "OpenAI", "Microsoft", "iMessage", "ChatGPT", "Steve Moraco", "Anthropic", "Google"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/apple-degrades-privacy-and-encryption-of-imessage-with-ai-integrations", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/apple-degrades-privacy-and-encryption-of-imessage-with-ai-integrations.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/apple-degrades-privacy-and-encryption-of-imessage-with-ai-integrations.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/apple-degrades-privacy-and-encryption-of-imessage-with-ai-integrations.jsonld"}}