Stupid Companies Make AI Promises. Smart Companies Have AI Policies. [Sponsor]

It seems like every company is scrambling to stake their claim in the AI goldrush–check out the CEO of Kroger promising to bring LLMs into the dairy aisle. And front line workers are following suit–experimenting with AI so they can work faster and do more.

In the few short months since ChatGPT debuted, hundreds of AI-powered tools have come on the market. But while AI-based tools have genuinely helpful applications, they also pose profound security risks. Unfortunately, most companies still haven’t come up with policies to manage those risks. In the absence of clear guidance around responsible AI use, employees are blithely handing over sensitive data to untrustworthy tools. 

AI-based browser extensions offer the clearest illustration of this phenomenon. The Chrome store is overflowing with extensions that (claim to) harness ChatGPT to do all manner of tasks: punching up emails, designing graphics, transcribing meetings, and writing code. But these tools are prone to at least three types of risk.

  1. Malware: Security researchers keep uncovering AI-based extensions that steal user data. These extensions play on users’ trust of the big tech platforms (“it can’t be dangerous if Google lets it on the Chrome store!”) and they often appear to work, by hooking up to ChatGPT et al’s APIs. 
  2. Data Governance: Companies including Apple and Verizon have banned their employees from using LLMs because these products rarely offer a guarantee that a user’s inputs won’t be used as training data.
  3. Prompt Injection Attacks: In this little known but potentially unsolvable attack, hidden text on a webpage directs an AI tool to perform malicious actions–such as exfiltrate data and then delete the records. 

Up until now, most companies have been caught flat-footed by AI, but these risks are too serious to ignore. 

At Kolide, we’re taking a two-part approach to governing AI use.

  1. Draft AI policies as a team. We don’t want to totally ban our team from using AI, we just want to use it safely. So our first step is meeting with representatives from multiple teams to figure out what they’re getting out of AI-based tools, and how we can provide them with secure options that don’t expose critical data or infrastructure.
  2. Use Kolide to block malicious tools. Kolide lets IT and security teams write Checks that detect device compliance issues, and we’ve already started creating Checks for malicious (or dubious) AI-based tools. Now if an employee accidentally downloads malware, they’ll be prevented from logging into our cloud apps until they’ve removed it.

Every company will have to craft policies based on their unique needs and concerns, but the important thing is to start now. There’s still time to seize the reins of AI, before it gallops away with your company’s data.

To learn more about how Kolide enforces device compliance for companies with Okta, click here to watch an on-demand demo.

Our thank to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: What’s the Deal with Fireworks?

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This week on MacStories Unwind, I explain America’s birthday to Federico and we veer into man-made lakes and nuclear power plants before recommending some of the many iPhone chargers we’ve been trying lately.

The Fourth of July

iOS 17-Compatible MagSafe Chargers and Battery Packs

MacStories Unwind+

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Chronicling: A Flexible Event Tracker with Modern Features and A Top-Notch Design

Chronicling is a brand-new event tracking app for iOS and iPadOS by Rebecca Owen. The App Store is full of apps for tracking everything from the very specific, like caffeine consumption, to apps like Chronicling that can be used to track nearly anything. What makes Owen’s app unique, though, is it’s one of the best examples of modern SwiftUI design that I’ve seen that incorporates the still relatively new Swift Charts and other recent Apple technologies to deliver a great user experience.

Trackers like Chronicling are the perfect fit for the iPhone. Most people have the device with them all the time, which makes it perfect for collecting data frequently, but it’s what you do with that data that matters the most. Maybe you’re trying to learn a new language and want to track how often you practice to hold yourself accountable. Or maybe your knee has been bothering you, and you want to keep track of when it flares up to see if it corresponds to an activity in your life. The point is, whether you’re trying to form a new habit or find patterns in things that happen throughout your day, part of the process is gathering the data. The other half of the equation is breaking the data down in a meaningful way. Chronicling does both well.

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Users Join Threads in Droves

Last night, by the time I called it quits and went to bed Threads, Meta’s new social network, had hit 2 million users in 2 hours. As I write this, Meta’s Adam Mosseri says the count has now surpassed 10 million in 7 hours, which exceeds Mastodon’s user base.

Currently, Threads is a pretty barebones 1.0 experience that was undoubtedly released this week to capitalize on Twitter’s latest troubles. The app is also buggy. I’ve seen posts fail to load, glitchy interactions, and other bugs, but despite the load, the new service has held up under the influx of users, which is impressive, although not entirely surprising given Meta’s scale.

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TV Forecast 2.0 Adds Movie Tracking

The App Store is full of apps for tracking the media you enjoy, and at least for TV shows and movies, many use Trakt.tv as a data source and tracking service and Just Watch to list where you can watch something. That results in a degree of sameness in the category. What’s harder to find on the App Store is a well-designed TV show and movie tracker. There’s a lot of data available about what we watch, and as a result, too many apps wind up with cluttered, confusing interfaces. TV Forecast 2.0 by Matt Comi isn’t like that, which is why it’s been one of my favorite TV trackers for a long time, and with an update today, it’s one of my favorite movie trackers too.

I reviewed TV Forecast in 2020, and what I said about the app is just as true today as it was then:

When I stopped to consider what it is about TV Forecast that has made it stick for me in a way that no other TV tracking app has, I keep coming back to its balanced design. It has a simple elegance that makes tracking shows feel effortless and natural. For supporting an activity that I use as a relaxing escape, that’s exactly the type of app I value. When all I want to do is quickly check off a few episodes or add a show that a friend recommends, I can. Just as easily, though, I can wander from one linked show to another discovering new ones along the way. It’s that balance between utility and exploration that makes TV Forecast my favorite TV tracker.

For more on TV Forecast’s overall design and functionality for TV shows, be sure to check out my 2020 review.

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Threader, a Shortcut to Open Threads Profiles from Mastodon and Twitter Directly in the Threads App

Running Threader via Back Tap on Twitter and Mastodon.

Running Threader via Back Tap on Twitter and Mastodon.

Instagram just rolled out Threads, the company’s new text-based social network that’s been advertised over the past few weeks as an alternative to Twitter. I’m trying out Threads (you can find my account at threads.net/@viticci) and in the process of setting up the list of people I want to follow, I immediately run into an annoying issue that I fixed with a shortcut.

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AppStories, Episode 341 – Do Wishes Come True? (Part 2)→

This week on AppStories, we conclude our look back at our pre-WWDC OS wishes for iOS 17, watchOS 10, and tvOS 17 and look at which came true.

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On AppStories+, I report on my early experiments with macOS Sonoma desktop widgets, while Federico follows up on his attempt to create a portable HomePod mini.

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Snazzy Labs on the Trouble with Mac Gaming→

Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs has an excellent video about the trouble with gaming on the Mac. The video’s title says it all: “Macs Can Game. But Apple Can’t.” As Nelson explains, it’s not the hardware or the software that’s holding the platform back. It’s the size of the Mac market and the lack of any apparent strategy to attract more than a few big-name game studios to the Mac.

Nelson’s critique is spot-on. More than ever, Apple seems to be interested in and care about gaming on the Mac. That’s gotten a lot of people’s hopes up, including mine, but the company needs to start spending money to get AAA games as exclusives on the platform if it ever wants to compete with the PC gaming market. Apple spent the money to go from Planet of the Apps to Ted Lasso, and it’s going to have to do the same with videogames if it wants to attract the industry’s biggest names and titles.

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Concepts: An Infinite Sketching App for iPad [Sponsor]

Sketch, explore and share endless ideas with Concepts’ infinite canvas for iPad. Used by creators for visual thinking, note taking, team communication and design, Concepts goes beyond a digital sketchbook.

Since everything you draw is a flexible vector-raster hybrid, you can move your ideas around like a visual playground to help you see the bigger picture. Organize notes, images and PDFs into visual moodboards and sketch your ideas on top. Use precision grids and guides to help you lay out designs, and apply real-world scale and measurements for professional projects.

With Concepts, you can whiteboard virtually with teams and clients using apps like Zoom. A built-in Presentation Mode helps you connect with others for live sharing and graphic discussion.

The app comes free as a basic sketching tool, with the ability to unlock 200+ libraries of brushes, objects and services via subscription or one-time purchase. To learn more about Concepts, visit their website.

MacStories readers – Enjoy a special 3 month extended free trial when you sign up for an annual subscription. Get three months of infinite creativity before you are billed.

Our thanks to Concepts for sponsoring MacStories this week.