Apple's extensive guidelines subcontractors use to evaluate Apple Intelligence have allegedly become politically motivated under the Trump administration, which Apple denies.
Training artificial intelligence models requires a lot of humans combing through potential prompts and results. One of Apple's subcontractors out of Barcelona employs around 200 people to do just that, and their guidelines have been leaked.
According to a very pointed report from Politico, Apple's guidelines were updated in March 2025, and when compared to the guidelines used across 2024, the changes appear politically motivated to appease President Trump.
Apple and the subcontractor Transperfect both deny a change in "policy," which is the wording the report used. They didn't deny that guidelines are updated regularly, with Transperfect sharing that they can change as often as 70 times in a year.
Apple's statement to Politico:
"Apple Intelligence is grounded in our Responsible AI principles, which guide every step from training to evaluation. Claims that we've shifted this approach or policy are completely false."
"We train our own models and work with third-party vendors to evaluate them using structured topics, including sensitive ones, to ensure they handle a wide range of user queries responsibly. These topics are shaped by our principles and updated regularly to keep improving our models."
The two parties took issue with the idea that there was a fundamental change in overall policy, not just the guidelines themselves, that would seem performative to appease Trump's demands. As always, note that anonymous tipsters that provide information like this to the media often have an axe to grind.
The report goes on to cite opinions of two employees about their employer and Apple, which is odd and irrelevant. Instead, we're focusing on the guidelines themselves and whether or not they denote the alleged policy change.
A change in guidelines, not policy
The report is a very long one, padded out with a lot of unnecessary detail that obfuscates exactly what was changed. The data is presented in a way to encourage shock and anger at Apple for capitulation to a world leader's demands.
Here's a list of changes we were able to pull from the text that can be viewed without the window dressing.
- A section that defined intolerance was removed, as did a mention of systemic racism, and was replaced with a note on how discrimination is harmful. The topic of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is marked as controversial.
- Sensitive topics were expanded to include DEI policies, vaccines, and elections.
- Use of the word "radical" in a political context was escalated from discriminatory to inflammatory.
- Topics around Gaza require special handling.
From this list, it appears that Apple's guidelines update was simply doing what it is meant to do — keep the topics of concern modernized. Nothing in the report suggests that Apple deliberately went out of its way to fit Trump's "anti-woke" policy or other controversial concepts.
The 125-page document increased the number of times Trump was mentioned from 3 to 11, though the context wasn't provided in the report.
The report also took issue with Apple's request for contractors to flag content that appears to be based on copyrighted material or that might disparage Apple executives. Neither of these is controversial or unique to Apple.
If anything, it appears to be preparing defenses in its foundation models to prevent abuse and the generation of controversial topics. But that's not as fun of a report.
What the contractors are doing
When the guidelines mark a topic as controversial, it means the contractor should pay close attention to how the AI responds to that topic. They must respond to it with more consideration, context, and evidence.
Parts of Apple Intelligence is being trained by contractors
The report suggests this is all being done to train a rumored chatbot. The employees aren't supposed to know they are working for Apple, but there are enough signs to suggest they are.
Apple's executives, namely Greg Jozwiak, have shared that they have no intention of building a chatbot. So, the report may be mislabeling what will eventually be the new LLM-powered Siri that can parse queries that are sent to a Gemini-powered web agent.
Whatever the case, it doesn't seem like there's anything particularly controversial happening with Apple's use of contractors. Of course, this kind of scrutiny is expected when Apple CEO Tim Cook is seen at dinner with Trump or giving him golden trophies.
If Apple were changing itself to become more Trump-friendly, there would be signs. Instead, the company has doubled down on DEI, green energy initiatives, and international trade — all things that are the antithesis of the Trump administration.
