Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Apple’s new Enhanced Visual Search in Photos uses machine learning to recognize things like landmarks.
- The service works by sharing encrypted data from your pictures with Apple, and includes privacy safeguards.
- Some users are still concerned that Enhanced Visual Search is enabled by default, rather than having you opt in.
There are a million different ways to think about privacy, evaluating the balance between how much of it we want to cede, and what benefits we get for doing so. With our devices, and our increasing reliance on AI tools like machine learning, a convenient line to draw when making such evaluations is that between processes that occur fully locally, and those that require working on data remotely in the cloud. Right now, Apple users are raising the alarm about the privacy implications of the new Enhanced Visual Search in Photos, and the data it shares with Apple by default.
Over the weekend, software engineer Jeff Johnson got this ball rolling by sharing his concerns about the presence of a new Enhanced Visual Search option that appears in both iOS 18 and on macOS 15 (via 91mobiles). The tool attempts to add value to your photos by identifying stuff like landmarks, matching elements of their construction with a database Apple’s compiled. Apple describes the feature and outlines its privacy practices as such:
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 IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos.
While the company goes on to provide instructions for turning Enhanced Visual Search off, Johnson is quick to point out that this service comes enabled by default on both iOS and macOS. That means that unless you take positive steps to the contrary, information from the pictures you shoot will end up being sent to Apple.
Now, before we start getting too paranoid here, it’s clear that Apple is taking some legitimate steps to mitigate the possible privacy impact. The homomorphic encryption the company mentions, for instance, means that this is a system that allows Apple’s cloud servers to work on your data while it’s still encrypted, rather than having to decrypt it (and potentially expose private location details) first.
Even if we’re to assume that system works flawlessly, some users are just not going to be comfortable having a tool like this involve sending their data to the cloud. But what feels like the greater offense may be the way it’s been enabled for everyone by default, rather than asking user to opt in.
If you’re unsure about Enhanced Visual Search and would rather just turn it off, you can find the toggle under Photos settings on your iPhone or in General settings on Macs.
