Homomorphic-based Enhanced Visual Search is so privacy-preserving, iPhone giant activated it without asking

I have never liked Apple and lately even less. F… US monopolies

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    10 days ago

    Although this is terrible, once again a headline on lemmy made me paranoid only to find out that my phone probably doesn’t even support this.

    Going through the settings and turning things off is second nature to me by now, it’s not unique to Apple (looking at your Microsoft).

    What we need is an opt out mode on every device. Similar to the accept necessary cookies only, we need every device to let you fully opt out from everything it can when you boot it up for the first time.

    • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
      0·
      10 days ago

      I don’t think it’s fair to say “once again a headline on lemmy”, by connotation you’re vaguely suggesting Lemmy is responsible.

      I’m a big settings person as well but honestly Apple is a fucking evil genius at hiding options in menus within menus. Plus this was an opt-change done randomly in the middle of “nobody knows”, I don’t check all of my settings and their subsequent menus daily for any changes being made.

      I’m just flabbergasted by the whole apple industry though. Like it’s obvious when a company wants to offer a new user experience (their newest innovative design!), and it’s obvious when a company wants to only tailor to “Their preferred vision of what an apple user and their experience should be”. No one asked for this shit, and it’s being shoved down everyone’s throats.

      I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I still watch people walk into a Dollar General knowing how crappy that company acts and how much more costly everything is. We’re all slowly being pigeon holed into a “unified user experience” and it’s the shittiest outcome.

  • kipo@lemm.eeEnglish
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    10 days ago

    An opt-out that you can’t opt out of because Apple already opted you in and took your photos?

    This seems like it is going to be a huge lawsuit. Since a class action won’t deter them or help us, let’s all sue Apple individually in small claims court and kill them by death from a billion cuts.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
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      10 days ago

      Not saying that it shouldn’t be illegal and it’s shady as fuck, but GDPR opt-outs are usually retroactive, meaning you can remove consent from data they’ve already processed, and they have to retroactively scrub your personal data out.

      • kipo@lemm.eeEnglish
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        10 days ago

        If they did this in Europe, I would argue it is a GDPR violation and it would be impossible for Apple to remove the data they collected. I hope the EU fines Apple out the nose for this.

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        How do they retroactively remove the knowledge the AI has gained from analyzing all of our personal information?

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          They don’t need to.

          They only have to remove your personal data. So the company / AI model is not allowed to have data specifically on you, but it can have the average age of people living in your town even if your data contributed to calculating that average.

          That said, Apple here never had affirmative consent, so they can’t get away with just doing this.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      According to another comment, the photos never leave your device, that part of the processing is done on-device. The global index is on Apple servers.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Apple opted customers in, got sued, and will now prompt customers if they want to be opted in or out.

    • Anticorp@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      11 days ago

      And if there’s a class action lawsuit then it’ll be $95 million settlement spread out over 1.46 billion customers (this just happened over Siri spying).

  • dubyakay@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides [your] IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos. You can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General.

    Apple did explain the technology in a technical paper published on October 24, 2024, around the time that Enhanced Visual Search is believed to have debuted. A local machine-learning model analyzes photos to look for a “region of interest” that may depict a landmark. If the AI model finds a likely match, it calculates a vector embedding – an array of numbers – representing that portion of the image.

    So it’s local. And encrypted. How is this really news? Am I missing something?

  • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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    11 days ago

    For-profit companies are perpetually locked in a conflict of interest. Inevitably, they will have to decide between what is in the best interest of their users (or other public interests such as the environment for example) with their never-ending obsession to make ever more money. No matter what they say or do publicly, they will always sell out for more profit.

    In this case, a bunch of Silicon Valley investors (people who have collectively made trillions over every iteration of IT progress) are forcing “AI” to be the next thing. They have basically decided that they want all tech progress to focus on this area and are forcing every company they invest in to make that happen, regardless of the societal impact.

    As a result, you can see clearly that all of these companies (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Reddit) are basing all their business decisions into trying to make this fantasy become a reality. Even Apple now, the masters of creating a facade of privacy is falling straight into line. And the one thing they all have in common: investors.

    And that is why you should always be wary of interacting with big business interests - they will inevitably sell you out someday.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      Somehow I am much less scared of AI being forced into everything compared to VR or crypto.

      I guess it’s because I know AI is a nothing burger and will slowly lose hype.

      • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        While I agree that the AI they will implement will likely not be very effective, it doesn’t have to be to cause massive human suffering. Eg. Google incorrectly marking exposed photos of your kid for your doctor as CSAM. There’s also no guarantee that once these companies finally wake the fuck up (If they’re not already completely aware what they’re doing is messed up) that they will close these holes they’re punching, and that could mean they could replace AI with a mass surveillance tool at any point without you knowing. Nobody should be a fan of this.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
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    9 days ago

    I love how Apple advertises “Privacy by default” but they do this

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    “Apple is being thoughtful about doing this in a (theoretically) privacy-preserving way, but I don’t think the company is living up to its ideals here,” observed software developer Michael Tsai in an analysis shared Wednesday. “Not only is it not opt-in, but you can’t effectively opt out if it starts uploading metadata about your photos before you even use the search feature. It does this even if you’ve already opted out of uploading your photos to iCloud.”

    Reading the article, the service itself is interesting and it sounds like Apple might have found a way to process the data while preserving user privacy, but the fact that they unilaterally opted everyone in without giving them a choice is the biggest problem.

    • Anticorp@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      11 days ago

      That’s Apple though. “We know what you want better than you do” is almost a company mantra.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
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        10 days ago

        Not almost, it just is. It is the winning strategy right now. Everyone who is doing it gains massive profits somehow. Money speaks for itself, isn’t it?

        • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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          10 days ago

          I doubt every company who shits on it’s user’s privacy and their preferred experience is gaining massive profits right now, we’re just discussing the successful ones. I think the two leading factors in this scenario are “Brand Recognition” and “double dipping into as many aspects as possible with your user’s data.” The whole ‘if it’s free’, apple is definitely getting a kick back sending all this data to them even if it’s “secure”.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      Agreed, I’m not an Apple fan, but the headline is vague enough to make things seem worse than they are.