Here's How To Disable Apple Intelligence Report On MacOS

Apple Intelligence was disabled by default. (photo: x @QuibellPaul)

Apple's much-anticipated AI feature, dubbed Apple Intelligence, has been released for most Apple platforms on the latest hardware. Public acceptance, arguably, is less enthusiastic - with several reports claiming up to 73% of Apple users are not interested in the technology.

Others, such as the BBC, complained that Apple Intelligence was not ready for prime time - with Apple devices reporting false news titles after making a summary.

Media reports have also emerged about the massively increasing storage requirements for devices that activate Apple Intelligence. This is because Apple Intelligence is working secretly in the background - secretly collecting and analyzing information on your device while it is active.

In some cases, Apple Intelligence's storage requirements have reportedly increased from initial 4GB to 7GB per device - and these requirements are increasing over time. Increasing Apple Intelligence storage requirements can lead to slower performance.

Apple has promised a modular AI feature in the future so users can only download certain AI parts they want to use to save device resources.

Some Apple Intelligence features like the Image Playground may not be of interest to all Apple users.

Apple has also tried to reassure users that Apple Intelligence is safe and maintains user privacy. One aspect of how it is done is to provide Apple Intelligence Reports - basically text summary of AI requests for what has been done locally on Apple's Private Cloud Compute (PCC) servers and on Apple's Private Cloud Competitive (PCC) servers.

Without discussing all the technical details, PCC uses a special inference server Apple calls The Inference Engine (TIE). PCC also uses a special Apple Metal framework called MetaML that uses graphics SHAders and computing kernels for inference computing.

When Apple Intelligence sends AI requests to PCC, it sends them to PCC nodes running the TIE instance.

All Apple PCC requests are encrypted when sent to Apple so Apple may not even have access to demand content.

For a short guideline section of this article for macOS reports, jump to the final part below Apple's "Apple Intelligence Report on macOS" - but you have to understand the background of how Apple Intelligence works on your Mac first.

You have to activate it to use it

For privacy reasons, Apple Intelligence is disabled by default. To enable it, you must enable it in System Settings or Settings app on your device. On iPhone, Apple Intelligence only works on iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Max, or iPhone 16 or 16 Pro. You also need iOS 18.1 or later for iOS devices.

For Macs, you need Macs based on Apple Silicon and macOS Sequoia 15.2 or later. More updates for Apple Intelligence will come from Apple in 2025 and beyond.

Currently, Apple Intelligence is only supported in several languages: English is a localized version for the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa. Apple has promised more language support in the near future.

Note that even if your device is set to use one of these languages, Apple Intelligence will still not work within the mainland EU or China for legal reasons. Apple is currently working to bring Apple Intelligence to those countries.

Enable Apple Intelligence In MacOS

To enable Apple Intelligence, open the System Settings app on your Mac, then click on Apple Intelligence and Siri in the column on the left.

On the Apple Intelligence and Siri panels, click the Get Apple Intelligence button. When you do, you will get a small sheet with a summary of what you install and link to more information about privacy.

Next, click Prepare Now to start activating Apple Intelligence - but read the warning below first.

There is also a link on how Apple manages your data. Note that when you enable Apple Intelligence, it will start collecting information about your Mac and the data in it. If you don't want this, don't activate it.

Since Apple Intelligence includes a Writing Tool, it may or may not collect information about any writing you do on your device. Siri and Search now also work by collecting data and now they are tied to Apple Intelligence as well.

Apple's data collected is processed on its Private Cloud Compute server (for complex tasks) and on your device locally. By adding machine learning to macOS and iOS, Apple Intelligence can better understand what your interests and tastes are, and how it can work on your device to provide the information you're looking for.

There are several other notes in the System Settings app Apple provides to tell you how it uses your data:

"The information sent to Apple related to your search is used to process your request and to develop and improve search results, such as by using your search query to perfect the Search model. It's not linked to Apple's account or your email address.

Aggregate information can be used to improve other Apple products and services. Apple can also send a limited collection of search queries sampled randomly to search tools for the purpose of evaluating and improving Search performance and quality".

Also, your data collection is not limited to Apple. By clicking Prepare Now and then agreeing, you also allow Apple to send your data to a "trusted third-party service provider".

So, be careful with the implications for your info and data when using Apple Intelligence. There's also a part where you can disable which apps Siri can learn and Search manually - but developers have to build this support for that.

Downloading and ChatGPT

Once you activate Apple Intelligence on Mac, it will start downloading software including the language model (LM) used in AI analysis. This can take a long time and the software is a few gigabytes in size.

Apple also added support for OpenAI ChatGPT in macOS and on iOS 18.2 and later. To enable ChatGPT, go to System Settings->Apple Intelligence & Siri and search for ChatGPT in the Extension section.

You need to click the Prepare button next to Use ChatGPT to enable it. There is also a slider to enable ChatGPT instructions at Siri.

Apple has a page that explains how to use the ChatGPT service on Mac.

Once these features are available and functioning, Apple Intelligence starts collecting and sending info in the background continuously until you turn it off.

Apple's Intelligence Report In MacOS

To see what Apple Intelligence has done on your Mac, go to System Settings->Privacy & Security-> Apple Intelligence Report and set the duration of the report by clicking the pop-up menu on the right. Currently there are only three options:

As the regulatory panel warns, the report may include personal data such as messages and text that you enter in a stationery.

To view the report, click the Activity Export button:

When you do, you will get a standard file Saves panel where you can name a report and where you want to save it. Reports are exported in JSON (JavaScript Object Notice) format.

You can read the report by opening it up at a text editor that supports JSON, or looking at raw JSON data by opening it at any plaintext editor including TextEdit Apple or the Xcode development environment. Some third-party JSON editors can format JSON data for you to make it easier to read.

Basically at the top of the report there are two JSON nodes named the Requests and PrivateCloudCompute Requests model.

Each of these nodes contains a sequence of requests, each element of the runk contains the request data itself.

Each request contains time stamps, devices, server info, and encrypted text from the request itself (which you won't be able to read).

To completely disable Apple's Intelligence Report, simply set the pop-up menu above to Disable. This stops gathering information about how Apple Intelligence makes requests.

Pay attention to the time you do this, it will delete all currently collected report data - and there is no way to recover data once deleted.

Apple's Intelligence Report doesn't contain much useful user-level info but summarizes what requests are made, when they are made, and where they are processed.

Technical details

The first JSON node in the report (Requests model) contains requests for local demand and PCC. The second node (privateCloudComputeRequests) contains metadata used in PCC requests including:

This can be roughly summarized as:

Each ratification bundle contains a (Google) Protocol Buffer (Protobuf), which defines how the bundle data should be formalized. The protobuf is essentially a messaging construction for serial information exchange.

Each bundle contains one or more of the structure of the Bundle Atestation message which contains the number of byte, ticket ID, info hash (encryption), time stamps, and more.

There are several more structures in each bundle for additional security info and encryption. All PCC ratification bundles are time-sensitive and cannot be decrypted once a certain time passes (google.protobuf.Timestamp key_expiration). This ensures the bundle cannot be intercepted and stored for use later.

Bundle is also linked to the Coded Demand Encryption Key (REK) and to certain initial PCC nodes containing the unique OS ID as well - ensuring the request sent cannot be copied or hijacked by other PCC nodes or malicious actors.

Each request also contains a Data Center Identity Key Certificate (DCIK) belonging to a trusted PCC node running on a verified Apple Silicon device.

These hardware integrity security measures make it nearly impossible for PCC requests to be sent to or processed by fake or malicious hardware - even by the original Apple Silicon hardware that has been tampered with.

Overall, Apple's Intelligence Report provides a useful glimpse of what Apple Intelligence is doing on your device and on PCC. Hopefully Apple will expand this report in the future to provide more information about what Apple Intelligence is really doing.