AI in Brief — Monday, 18 May 2026

Apple’s upcoming Siri revamp is being framed around privacy as a primary selling point, with the company signalling that how user data is handled will matter as much as the quality of the assistant itself. The prospect of privacy-forward chat controls underscores a competitive strategy aimed at differentiating Apple in a market where consumers increasingly judge AI products by what they do with personal information, not just what they can generate. Source

The Elon Musk-OpenAI trial’s final days spotlighted a question that now goes beyond technical performance: whether the leadership behind a frontier model can be trusted. With the focus on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s trustworthiness, the case illustrates how AI governance and accountability—who is responsible, what claims can be relied on, and how incentives are managed—are becoming central political and economic issues for the sector. Source

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the more chatbot-like Siri set to debut in iOS 27 could include an option to auto-delete chat histories. If Apple follows through, the change would directly address user concerns about persistent conversational data while also reinforcing Apple’s attempt to use privacy as the differentiator on the AI front as it continues to lag behind competitors. Source

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