What is Private Cloud Compute?

Announced at WWDC24, Apple Intelligence is a personal intelligence system that Apple promises can understand text and images, work across multiple apps and draw from personal context to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks.

Made up of “highly-capable” generative models that are specialised for users’ everyday tasks, Apple claims that Apple Intelligence “maintains the privacy and security of user data” with Private Cloud Compute, but what is this and how does it keep your data safe?

Considering Apple Intelligence is beginning to roll out on compatible iPhones, iPads and Macs in the coming weeks, we’ve looked more into Apple’s Private Cloud Compute to help you understand how the platform really works. 

Keep reading to learn more about Private Cloud Compute and exactly how Apple promises it will keep your data secure when using Apple Intelligence.

What is Apple Private Cloud Compute?

Private Cloud Compute (PCC) is a cloud intelligence system designed by Apple, specifically for private AI processing. 

Apple explains that PCC “extends the industry-leading security and privacy of Apple devices into the cloud, making sure that personal user data sent to PCC isn’t accessible to anyone other than the user — not even to Apple.”

PCC is built with custom Apple silicon and a hardened operating system designed for privacy, with Apple stating it believes “PCC is the most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale.”

How does Apple Private Cloud Compute work?

In order to process more sophisticated requests, Apple Intelligence may need to use larger, more complex models in the cloud. However this could be difficult as end-to-end encryption isn’t appropriate for cloud services, as AI hardware requires unencrypted access to both the user’s request and accompanying personal data in order to fulfil its prompt. 

With this in mind, Apple explains that the “traditional cloud service security model isn’t a viable starting point” to live up to its security and privacy guarantees and needs to instead bring its “industry-leading security model” to the cloud. This is where PCC comes in.

PCC allows Apple Intelligence to “flex and scale its computational capacity, drawing on larger, server-based models to handle more complex requests, all while protecting user privacy.” 

When a user makes a request, Apple Intelligence will first analyse whether it can be processed on-device. If greater computing power is needed then Apple Intelligence will draw on PCC, which will send on the data that is relevant to the task in order to be processed on Apple silicon servers. 

When requests are routed to the PCC, data is neither stored nor made accessible to Apple and is only used to fulfil the user’s requests. 

What makes Private Cloud Compute safe?

Apple explains that its Apple silicon servers that form the foundation of Private Cloud Compute “provide unprecedented cloud security” by following on from its industry-leading protections of the iPhone. 

PCC uses Secure Enclave which protects critical encryption keys on the server just as it does on an iPhone, as well as Secure Boot to ensure the OS running on the server is signed and verified like in iOS, and Trusted Execution Monitor to make sure that only signed and verified code runs.