On December fifth, the U.S. Patent Office published a patent application of Apple's titled "Temporal Reasoning. " Considering that Apple wanted to "save" their customer base from targeted advertising by pushing their "Privacy" narrative, it was interesting to find that targeted advertising is just fine in context with algorithms that they're working on so as to track and understand every move that their customers make. Will I be able to opt out of this Apple? If my smartphone / iPhone is going to analyze me to death to the point of even focusing on target marketing from your ads, Apple's moral high-ground is no more than a mirage.   

Apple's patent relates to a contextual understanding system and method that involves the generation of life events to construct a comprehensive mapping of routine events and extraordinary events in a user's life. This mapping encompasses past, present, and future aspects, incorporating dimensions of activity and social interactions.

The subject technology encompasses the processing of collected contextual data over time and the application of various operations to extract valuable insights of users. These insights are manifested as life events, which provide a comprehensive description of different dimensions, including temporal aspects, activity in space, and social interactions.

The resulting mapping offers a holistic representation of the user's life context, enabling personalized recommendations, predictive analysis, and targeted services based on the user's unique experiences and circumstances.

Through the utilization of contextual understanding techniques, the subject technology facilitates the systematic organization and categorization of key events in a user's life, considering the spatial dimensions of activity as well as the social interactions associated with these events.

This enhanced knowledge representation facilitates the development of advanced algorithms, models, and systems that can provide valuable insights and recommendations to a user.

The incorporation of life event datasets into the graph-based data structure further enables the creation of personalized applications and services in various fields, including but not limited to, behavior analysis, health management, and targeted advertising.

The detection of life events ensures the availability of high-quality data for these applications, contributing to an improved user experience and enhanced system performance.

For full details, review Apple's patent application  20240403307.

It sounds like hypocrisy to me. Is it happening today? Yes. For instance, in Apple TV+, they have a segment titled "For You – Discover personalized picks based on your past plays." They then make recommendations for shows from BBC, PBS and so forth. Obviously Apple will make money if you chose that content that isn't from Apple TV+. Is that not target marketing? Of course it is. The patent shows it will go further into health recommendations and so forth by deeply analyzing their customers. That's Privacy?