Apple Intelligence Not Trained on YouTube Content, Says Apple

Apple on Thursday addressed concerns about its use of AI training data, following an investigation that revealed Apple, along with other major tech companies, had used YouTube subtitles to train their artificial intelligence models.

Apple Intelligence General Feature
The investigation by Wired earlier this week reported that over 170,000 videos from popular content creators were part of a dataset used to train AI models. Apple specifically used this dataset in the development of its open-source OpenELM models, which were made public in April.

However, Apple has now confirmed to 9to5Mac that OpenELM does not power any of its AI or machine learning features, including the company's Apple Intelligence system. Apple clarified that OpenELM was created solely for research purposes, with the aim of advancing open-source large language model development.

On releasing OpenELM on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code, Apple researchers described it as a "state-of-the-art open language model" that had been designed to "empower and enrich the open research community." The model is also available through Apple's Machine Learning Research website. Apple has stated that it has no plans to develop new versions of the OpenELM model.

The company emphasized that since OpenELM is not integrated into ‌Apple Intelligence‌, the "YouTube Subtitles" dataset is not being used to power any of its commercial AI features. Apple reiterated its previous statement that ‌Apple Intelligence‌ models are trained on "licensed data, including data selected to enhance specific features, as well as publicly available data collected by our web-crawler."

The Wired report detailed how companies including Apple, Anthropic, and NVIDIA had used the "YouTube Subtitles" dataset for AI model training. This dataset is part of a larger collection known as "The Pile," which is compiled by the non-profit organization EleutherAI.

Popular Stories

Apple Shopping Event 2025

Apple Announces 2025 Black Friday Event, Here's What You Can Get

Thursday November 20, 2025 6:28 am PST by
Apple's annual four-day Black Friday through Cyber Monday shopping event is returning on Friday, November 28 through Monday, December 1 in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand, and others. During the shopping event, customers can get an Apple gift card with...
iPhone 17 Pro Cosmic Orange

10 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's iPhone 18 Pro

Wednesday November 19, 2025 4:00 am PST by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. One thing worth...
iOS 26

Everything New in iOS 26.2 Beta 3

Monday November 17, 2025 3:20 pm PST by
Apple provided developers with the third beta of an upcoming iOS 26.2 update, and there are still new features that are being added with each beta that we get. We've rounded up all of the changes that Apple made in beta 3. AirDrop Apple added new AirDrop functionality, providing a way for two people to share files temporarily without having to add one another as contacts. iOS 26.2...
applecare apple care banner

Apple Brings New AppleCare+ Options to India

Tuesday November 18, 2025 8:42 am PST by
Apple today announced an expansion of AppleCare+ coverage in India, with new options for monthly and annual plans, and the addition of Theft and Loss for iPhone for the first time. Options for monthly and annual AppleCare+ plans in India provide more choice and flexibility, allowing users to keep coverage for as long as they require. Apple's vice president of Worldwide iPhone Product...
ipad mini 7 feature red and blue

iPad Mini 8: Four Major New Features to Expect

Wednesday November 19, 2025 7:50 am PST by
Apple's eighth-generation iPad mini is highly likely to arrive next year, offering a significant refresh of the device with at least four major new features. OLED Display The next-generation version of the iPad mini could feature an OLED display, as part of Apple's plan to expand the display technology across many more of its devices. Apple's first OLED device was the Apple Watch in 2015, ...
iOS 26

iOS 26.2 Adds These New Features to Your iPhone

Thursday November 20, 2025 10:50 am PST by
iOS 26.2 is currently in beta testing. The upcoming update includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, including a new Liquid Glass slider for the Lock Screen's clock, offline lyrics for Apple Music, and more. In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 26.2 will be released to all users in December, but it did not provide a specific release date. Keep reading...
iPhone 17 Pro and Air N1 Feature

iPhone 17 vs. iPhone 16 Wi-Fi Speeds: New Study Reveals the Winner

Tuesday November 18, 2025 10:53 am PST by
A new study has revealed that the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air achieve significantly faster average Wi-Fi speeds compared to the iPhone 16 series, thanks to Apple's custom-designed N1 chip. The study was conducted by Ookla, the company behind the popular Speedtest website and app. It said the results are based on global, crowdsourced Speedtest user data...
Apple Wallet ID Illinois

iPhone Driver's License Feature Launching in Illinois

Tuesday November 18, 2025 8:47 am PST by
In select U.S. states, residents can add their driver's license or state ID to the Wallet app on the iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a convenient and contactless way to display proof of identity or age at select airports and businesses, and in select apps. Starting this Wednesday, November 19, the feature will be available to residents of Illinois. The announcement confirmed that the...
macbook black friday

The Best Early Black Friday Mac Deals

Tuesday November 18, 2025 7:32 am PST by
We're getting closer to Black Friday, which lands next week on Friday, November 28. In the lead-up to the shopping holiday, we're tracking a few lowest-ever prices on Apple's most popular Macs, including the M4 MacBook Air and brand new M5 MacBook Pro. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment,...
hikawa phone grip stand apple%402x

Apple Launches Second Limited-Edition iPhone Accessory in a Month

Friday November 21, 2025 3:53 am PST by
Apple has begun selling the Hikawa Phone Grip and Stand, a new limited-edition iPhone accessory designed with accessibility in mind. Designed by LA-based Bailey Hikawa to celebrate the 40th anniversary of accessibility at Apple, the grip uses magnets to securely snap onto any iPhone with MagSafe. Apple says it can be removed with ease, and doubles as a stand with two different viewing...

Top Rated Comments

sniffies Avatar
18 months ago
Thank god for that. Training on YouTube videos from popular content creators would render Apple Intelligence pretty unintelligent.
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Havalo Avatar
18 months ago
Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied - Sir Humphrey (Yes, Minister)
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
foobarbaz Avatar
18 months ago

Like a person, it could have been exposed to anything out in the wild and we don’t walk around with a list of references. But we treat this software differently to people… you wouldn’t let anyone off the street on your iPhone or laptop… similar goes for AI.
I think you're humanizing the AI too much. It's not a person searching knowledge "in the wild". It is a large file that has been created by a training algorithm which is given a lot of crawled data as the input. It doesn't learn anything outside of what its creators are passing along. And crucially, once training is complete, it's no longer acquiring knowledge. (Every interaction you have with it starts with a blank slate or explicit "context" given from your previous sessions/personal data.)

So the model's creators know absolutely what has been used to train it. They're generally just cagey about it, because they don't want to be sued once they admit whose copyrighted content they've used.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
peneaux Avatar
18 months ago

Thank god for that. Training on YouTube videos from popular content creators would render Apple Intelligence very unintelligent.
Unintelligent is a very polite way of saying garbage.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Fuzzball84 Avatar
18 months ago
How do we truly know what they have been trained on?

Like a person, it could have been exposed to anything out in the wild and we don’t walk around with a list of references. But we treat this software differently to people… you wouldn’t let anyone off the street on your iPhone or laptop… similar goes for AI.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
antiprotest Avatar
18 months ago
I believe Apple on this, because from all that we have heard this thing is going to be so delayed that at this point it hasn't been trained on ANY content.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)