How Apple's Vision Pro Offers a Peek at AI's Future
The most important feature of Apple's new headset is how it treats the most personal of all user data
Suppose you haven’t been researching and reporting on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for many years as I have. In that case, you might not know that the Apple Vision Pro may be one of the most anticipated devices to ever come from the Cupertino, California-based technology company. The first rumors of some kind of Apple immersive headset cropped up back in 2018 via a report from Ming-Chi Kuo, an Apple-focused analyst who is frequently accurate when it comes to tipping off Wall Street as to what the company has coming next. Back then, the prediction was that the device would debut in 2020.
Of course, a global health crisis put the brakes on nearly everyone’s plans that year. As a result, the rumors of the device’s release kept getting pushed back every year, until mid-2022, when a number of reliable sources confirmed the eventual 2023 presentation of what we now know as the Apple Vision Pro.
My own predictions, based on existing technology advances and immersive computing trends, focused on how Apple might deploy a headset tethered to an external computing unit, much like the Magic Leap device, in service of better weight distribution, more computing power, as well as power and heat management. (I was only partly correct since the external component on the Apple Vision Pro only houses the system’s battery…for now.) I also predicted that, like the iPhone and Apple Watch before it, the immersive computing device would first be shunned by tech reviewers and then embraced by mainstream consumers and the business community.
If this now familiar product adoption trajectory holds true with the Apple Vision Pro, the dynamic may well increase the overall embrace of the wide range of AR, VR, and mixed reality devices on the market like the Meta Quest, the HTC Vive, the HoloLens, the aforementioned Magic Leap (whose founder, Rony Abovitz, was among the first to popularize the term “spatial computing” to describe mixed reality), and many other immersive computing devices.
Apple’s talent for mainstreaming cutting-edge technology has less to do with innovation (Apple usually iterates on existing technology) and is more tied to its understanding of consumer culture and how to market new platforms. But why does Apple always seem to get away with making technology that was largely pioneered by others seem fresh as the new “must-have” product? What does Apple know that other companies don’t? I think I have a least one answer to that multi-faceted question.
Apple’s Secret Sauce: Your Secrets
Aside from Apple’s ability to make the average person adopt bleeding-edge technology that already exists in other less popular forms, the company prioritizes something that many other companies don’t—user privacy.
The topic of privacy was a key moment during the company’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) unveiling of the Apple Vision Pro. Considering what the Apple Vision Pro is (essentially, a giant bank of sensors), privacy may serve as one of the key drivers for the device’s adoption by business enterprises and consumer buyers alike.
I will admit that over the years as I’ve used a number of different immersive computing headsets, particularly those that map your home or office, I’ve always harbored some concern about what data was being sent back to the company behind the device. Beyond smartphones and personal computers, mixed reality devices that literally map your home are potentially the most invasive of all computing devices. These devices see everything.
Unlike the iPhone, Apple’s immersive computing device requires an unprecedented level of trust from consumers. The company made it clear during its WWDC presentation that it understands just how much trust it’s asking of the user with this new platform.
Apple’s focus on user privacy was most famously highlighted back in 2016 when the company fought the FBI after the agency demanded that Apple unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino mass shooters.
“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe,” the company wrote in a statement responding to the case.
“While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”
A Lesson for the AI Industry
Although social media has increasingly encouraged many users to toss aside their privacy concerns, a number of users have come to appreciate Apple’s stance on user data privacy. Therefore, it’s no surprise that a device like the Apple Vision Pro, which maps a user’s face and tracks their eye movements, would employ the same approach to privacy that Apple uses for its flagship mobile device, the iPhone. It may not be clear to most today, but among all the AR and VR devices on the market, the killer feature of the Apple Vision Pro may very well be its privacy features.
“Where you look is very personal. It can give away something about what you're thinking. In Apple Vision Pro, where you look stays private,” said Apple vice president Mike Rockwell during the Apple Vision Pro’s reveal. “Eye input is isolated to a separate background process, so apps and websites can't see where you are looking. Only when you tap your fingers do results get communicated, just like a mouse click or tap on other Apple devices. And camera data is processed at the system level, so individual apps don’t need to see your surroundings.”
Apple didn’t specifically mention artificial intelligence during its product debut. But it did mention the use of Siri on the Apple Vision Pro, and that may be where the company’s approach to privacy as an essential feature becomes apparent as we all begin to integrate AI tools into our daily lives. As apps like ChatGPT increasingly become platforms for a range of extremely personal human-to-AI questions related to one’s health, relationships, life decisions, and business, the issue of trust and data privacy in AI will become an ever more important issue for many users. Along those lines, as Apple’s Siri inevitably evolves into a better AI assistant, perhaps one day powered by a three-dimensional avatar on the Apple Vision Pro, the importance of privacy on such a device will become quite obvious.
Will the Apple Vision Pro reach iPhone levels of popularity? Based on its current form factor, it doesn’t seem likely. But this is just the first version, and since Apple added “Pro” to the name, we’ll probably see smaller, lower-priced versions of Apple immersive computing wearables in the next couple of years. (Apple Vision Air? Apple Vision Mini?). No matter how the Apple Vision Pro product story plays out, what is most meaningful is the standard Apple is attempting to set for the most innovative product it has ever sold.
“No, innovation doesn’t mean that you must give up your privacy in order to enjoy new features,” seems to be the message Apple is sending. It’s a message and approach that many emerging AI companies that rely so heavily on human data would do well to echo and emulate. Those AI companies might also note that Apple just became the world’s first $3 trillion-dollar company, irrefutable proof that making enormous sums of money doesn’t also have to mean sacrificing user privacy. AI startups can have their data cake and eat it, too, it will just take a little more work on the road to building up the most valuable equity of all, user trust.