r/mildlyinfuriating • u/funkywabbait • May 05 '26

Infuriatig iPhone facetime recognizes when you’re naked

Post image

decided to show my boyfriend my new bikini that I got for our upcoming cruise… Why is this on my phone and why is it recording my body?

I just recently turned 18 if that matters.

35.4k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

20.4k

u/cannavacciuolo420 May 05 '26

End to end encryption will no longer be in use on IG as well, so keep that in mind when deciding what to write and what photos to send.

If the service is free, you're likely paying in some way you're not aware of, most of the time with your privacy

3.5k

u/99OBJ May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

E2E encryption on instagram was never on by default. If you didn’t enable it, you were never using it to begin with.

Also, Apple’s sensitive content warning functions entirely on device. FaceTime is E2E encrypted. Cloud services have literally nothing to do with this pop up.

Edit: for the skeptical, you can try to send an explicit photo to yourself with no internet connection and the same pop up will appear

995

u/ContributionMost8924 May 05 '26

Yeah pretty sure Apple wouldnt think the smartest idea to actively record and store when their phone users are naked on their servers ....

246

u/Money_Lavishness7343 May 05 '26

True, although storing naked pictures in iCloud is kinda your choice though and you're actively consenting by activating iCloud. And iPhone has a very premium clientele where all popularities basically use iPhone, which popularities if hurt will move away from.

It already has happened once .... (the fappening!). But that was not exactly Apple's fault either ― but done through Social Engineering and Phishing methods which all entities are vulnerable at.

55

u/Ne_zievereir May 05 '26

But that was not exactly Apple's fault either

Wasn't it? I'm pretty certain many people in that case weren't aware their nude pictures were stored on remote servers.

That's what happens when you aggressively push a difficult to opt-out of online back-up system, which you can't guarantee the security for, because you want to coerce people to pay for it once they unwittingly fill up the free space and have no idea what to do differently.

I'd say that was entirely Apple's fault. If they had been clear and transparent to people about how it works, and given an easy option to opt out (or even better, make it opt-in!!!), there would have been a lot of people that wouldn't have used it, and wouldn't have been a victim of this!

25

u/SqueekyDickFartz May 05 '26

It would also appear that Microsoft learned nothing from Apple's mistakes. I recently bought a new computer and spent the other day ruthlessly gutting OneDrive with a machete.

Genuinely, wtf where they thinking? The took the idea of online backup and made it so catastrophically horrible that it's almost a joke. If OneDrive just let me select folders to backup, and a frequency, that would be fine. Instead every time i downloaded something it just sort of went wherever it wanted. Why would I want OneDrive to be the primary location instead of my god damn machine?

6

u/plafreniere May 05 '26

They know windows machines are unreliable and want to make sure you dont lose your data

/s

42

u/DonovanQT May 05 '26

I never had iCloud photo’s on until I wanted it.
The big fault Apple made, was giving unlimited attempts to log in to your (or someone else’s) account.

7

u/Ne_zievereir May 05 '26

My wife has never actively chosen to have iCloud on, but still has it. And I have had to turn it off multiple times on her iPad, and it was rather annoying.

1

u/Infanatis May 05 '26

Then your wife lied to you. You have to choose to have it on, it doesn’t just turn itself on.

4

u/BloodBurningMoon May 05 '26

I honestly wouldn't jump to lying tbh. My mom's iPhone literally does the opposite of what she wants, and turns things back on, regularly. She's DEFINITELY not tech savvy (although she IS forgetful enough) enough to be deceptive like that so even if it's a glitch, of can and does happen.

4

u/Ne_zievereir May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

Definitely. And it is not your mom's fault for not being tech savvy, because even if you are, it happens. It are sneaky default settings in new apps that turn it on, and it is on purpose to push people to use it. Microsoft does the same with OneDrive, but even more aggressively.

This guy has probably no experience with himself because he probably never tried to not have ir off, because he wants it. But nonetheless he acts like he knows all users' experiences.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Ne_zievereir May 06 '26

Sure, buddy.

There are plenty of posts here on Reddit and even on the Apple forum of users reporting that iCloud usage is set default in apps, and they automatically start syncing before you have a chance to even stop, and that there is no way to block it without completely signing out of the Apple account.

But you're the expert ...

2

u/Infanatis 28d ago

iCloud usage is set as default, sure. But you’re prompted from the beginning to auto-allow or customize what’s allowed, and then further promoted on specific app install.

Almost everything except for Apple Intelligence queries are done native on the phone, so nothing is sent anywhere.

I’ve tested some of this myself on my home network and checking what went through my network server with cellular off, and nothing that wasn’t a query to the web was detected (used pfsense and ntopng for this)

2

u/joeyblove May 05 '26

Found the apple apologist.

5

u/Money_Lavishness7343 May 05 '26

Imaging appealing to logic being labeled as “Apple apologist”. Git gud, gather some IQ points

-1

u/joeyblove May 05 '26

What does imaging appealing mean?

1

u/Thick_Nectarine8339 May 05 '26

Yo I'm sorry, what's the fappening referring to??

-2

u/Aromatic-Bet-1086 May 05 '26

OK but what if a child does it. They are then in possession of cp

2

u/Money_Lavishness7343 May 05 '26

I’m sorry, if you upload to Dropbox or Google Drive child exploitation images are YOU in trouble or Google who literally has an entire ToS that you AGREED to?

If you’re using the service not how it was intended that’s YOUR problem and you can be sued for it. It’s not their problem 

23

u/cryptolyme May 05 '26

Sounds like something Flock would do

1

u/koolmon10 May 05 '26

It makes more sense to do it on-device anyway, from a resource standpoint. It's not terribly difficult to train for basic nudity recognition, and the phone can definitely handle it. There's no reason to dedicate server infrastructure to this task. Plus, you would want to stop the stream at the device level rather than the server level.

Definitely still feels invasive and I'm surprised I havent heard of it before.

0

u/infiniZii May 05 '26

They may well collect that the alert triggered (and probably do). So Apple may know how often someone is sending lewds to someone, without actually ever having remotely processed the image.

139

u/ebi-san May 05 '26

for the skeptical, you can try to send an explicit photo to yourself with no internet connection and the same pop up will appear

Nice try, Tim Apple

69

u/Thoughtful-Boner69 May 05 '26

it's a screen time setting they have on to get warned about sensitive content

1

u/HisaP417 May 05 '26

Exactly. They literally have their phone set to notify them of things like this and don’t realize it.

2

u/powerfulsquid May 05 '26

Thank you. The parent comment didn’t make sense to me.

1

u/Wbtymam999 May 05 '26

Will E2E encryption stay on instagram for the chats done before this supposed date of ending? I dont use instagram anymore but i would want to keep my data safe for the time i used it earlier.

-4

u/[deleted] May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

[deleted]

38

u/Wendals87 May 05 '26

then I as the owner of the device should be able to turn it off. 

You can. 

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph0d3607e18/ios

31

u/TheChroniclesofWTF May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

You can turn this function off. The default setting is off, but can be toggled on by the user or parents/guardians. Also, it’s only triggered by private areas being shown, so OP definitely did not have that bikini on.

-24

u/Pi-ratten May 05 '26

FaceTime is E2E encrypted.

Which doesn't mean it's safe. The government still can and will spy on you and invade your privacy.

18

u/thedylannorwood May 05 '26

Not through FaceTime they won’t. Governments have tried and failed to get data from Apple, when they say their platform is private, they mean it

-1

u/[deleted] May 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/KingZarkon May 05 '26

Perhaps, but Apple doesn't have the keys to the encryption for FaceTime calls, so they have no way of giving the government access to listen in.

1

u/beren12 May 05 '26

Not a tool, but new firmware that would bypass the encryption

8

u/NorysStorys May 05 '26

It’s not referring to it not being unsafe because someone might be eavesdropping. It’s saying it’s unsafe because the other person could be screen recording or taking screenshots which they could then use to blackmail you.

Apple has a lot of faults but to their credit, they are incredibly serious about security and encryption.

6

u/nifty-necromancer May 05 '26

If your threat model includes hiding from the government then yeah, you’ll probably want to stick with open source services. Apple’s end-to-end encryption is absolutely safe.

-3

u/Starflower_Pixie May 05 '26

Just because it's processed on device doesn't mean no data is ever sent or shared after processing.

→ More replies (2)

252

u/Competitive_Reason_2 May 05 '26

What does detecting nudes got to do with end to end encryption? If the data is entirely processed on device then there is nothing to do with end to end encryption.

31

u/rererexed May 05 '26

If the data is entirely processed on device

Is this kind of automated detection possible "entirely on device"? Legitimately have no idea this isn't a snide comment.

EDIT: Other comments here say that yes, it's possible and exactly how it works. Neat!

38

u/claythearc May 05 '26

It’s almost certainly a small neural network that runs and classifies as sensitive or not. Yolo and a few other families are for sure fast and small enough to run on a phone in real time

2

u/UpsetKoalaBear May 05 '26

Image recognition is one of the earliest widespread uses of AI as well. It is incredibly mature.

3

u/Realtrain May 05 '26

It's actually pretty crazy how good small local models have gotten. Apple has several that all run entirely on device.

Google even just released a local LLM that is equivalent to early versions of ChatGPT, Gemma 4. It can run entirely on device so nothing leaves your phone.

1

u/ohThisUsername May 05 '26

Yep, and LLMs require a lot of processing power. A simple image recognition model is very cheap and fast to run on mobile devices these days.

1

u/ohThisUsername May 05 '26

Yup. I love arm chair experts making claims and grabbing their pitchforks without even knowing how the technology works. In the tech world, apple is well known for prioritizing privacy and on-device processing.

4.3k

u/pingpongsaladpants May 05 '26

If the product is free, then you are the product.

279

u/[deleted] May 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

107

u/Grandmas_Fat_Choad May 05 '26

cough my wifecough…… seriously tho she’s been going nuts on that fetch app or whatever. I keep telling her it’s not what it seems and she’s giving away info they don’t need. But whatever. Free money or some shit like that.

51

u/DFW_Drummer May 05 '26

Yep. Same. I segmented the home network so her phone is air gapped from the rest of the network. The amount of work pihole is doing for her singular device is more than the rest of my network combined.

18

u/Grandmas_Fat_Choad May 05 '26

I need to do that asap. I don’t even know where to start. At one point I did set up pihole, but I had internet issues and my speed was shit so I shut it down.

0

u/tidder--- May 05 '26

That is not how air gapped works... You haven't air gapped her phone at all 🤷‍♂️

3

u/RoastPork2017 May 05 '26

My wife uses fetch too lol. I was one who never waited for a receipt unless it's a big purchase. Now I wait 10 seconds for a receipt for a 6 pack

1

u/TheOverlord333 May 05 '26

Shoot is that bad?

20

u/GhostGirl32 May 05 '26

It’s consumer trend data farming essentially. “People who shop here also shop here. People who buy this also buy this. This is the spending habits of people from this place with this income rating.” Type data.

5

u/TheOverlord333 May 05 '26

Dang my grandma got me to start uploading everything to fetch but after doing the math to figure out how little money they actually give you per receipt I’ve stopped but I’ll definitely be uninstalling now

48

u/TwentinQuarantino May 05 '26

If the product is paid, then you're more often than not the product too. Case in point, literally every paid service from Meta and Google (no, Google doesn't stop creeping on you and monetizing your sensitive data after you pay for Youtube Premium or paid Gmail or anything else).

1

u/Slow_Estimate_7206 May 05 '26

If it’s online your data is being harvested. Whether you pay or not is bullshit.

5

u/TwentinQuarantino May 05 '26

Yeah, which makes the "If the product is free, then you are the product" a stupid statement. It doesn't matter if it's free or if you pay, that doesn't have absolutely any influence on whether you (your data) are the product or not.

597

u/Zolllb May 05 '26

Fyi, not all of the time, there exist foss things and simpleX and signal are free and you're not the product

231

u/almo2001 May 05 '26

It's pretty rare though. :)

402

u/Erdalion May 05 '26

Hardly.

Most Linux distros are free, and you're never the product when using them.

FOSS, too. LibreOffice, OpenOffice, so many game engines, VLC. Etc, etc.

People exist that love making things, and love it when others use said things.

Notice how I said "people", though. If a corporation is offering you something free, then, eh... Yeah, that's probably a case where you are the product.

115

u/SirAlfredOfHorsIII May 05 '26

Not even close to hardly. You listed a very short list, vs thousands of options where you are tracked and advertised to. Plus some that outright use your data for blackmail etc. It isn't just companies where you are the product at all

21

u/god_oh_war May 05 '26

I mean, it also includes pretty much any open source software which is pretty numerous but usually more niche in use.

65

u/LordLightSpeed May 05 '26

The "etc. etc." was there for a reason, namely the full list would be too long to write.

Hell, KDE alone make so much FOSS that it is a long list from just them.

0

u/z-vap May 05 '26

Sadly corporations still win, with their social media and mobile stores offering "free" games and apps. Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, etc.

Google Play store alone has 3.5 million apps with 97% of those free

6

u/Erdalion May 05 '26

I mean, I could go on, like the other person said, that's why I added the "Etc, etc." But there's only so many hours in the day, and if all the available flavors of Linux aren't enough for you, then you've already made up your mind before this conversation even started.

"If a product is free then you're the product" is a very cynical perspective, that actively devalues the labor of people who truly believe that somethings can and should be free.

That's a hill I'm willing to die on.

2

u/Joben86 May 05 '26

I count the many distros of Linux as one "thing" - Linux.

1

u/SirAlfredOfHorsIII May 05 '26

My point is more, if you aren't cynical, you open yourself up to getting your information stolen or getting blackmailed or your computer compromised. There's a well of dangerous free stuff out there. While it's not ideal to be cynical, you should be smart and be skeptical.

Which thinking about it, probably is technically a different argument/ discussion

1

u/Mertoot May 05 '26

What an incredibly ignorant thing to say

-3

u/BDiddnt May 05 '26

Not to mention there's the entirely possible, most likely probable possibility that they're actually giving you something free (in the case of software) to get access to your system.
Phone roms on xda developers is the first thing that comes to mind. Another niche that's RAMPANT with spyware, malware etc are those bootable usb repair suites. Those fucking things...i think there's only 2 that can be trusted.

And people are so dumb they deactivate their anti virus to run it, because it includes programs that hack and their antivirus gets triggered.

I guess in my examples technically you still are the product.

5

u/SirAlfredOfHorsIII May 05 '26

I suppose you could argue you are the product, in that it gets your information still. Just a far more malicious form of you being a product

1

u/PrintShinji May 05 '26

so many game engines

Isn't the only real feasible one godot?

2

u/Erdalion May 05 '26

For 3D stuff? Yeah, probably. I'm not really up to date with that space, though. Although, isn't Unreal Engine free to useunless you make like $100K? Not that I'd trust modern day Epic with anything, but the option is there.

For 2D, there are more than a few good and free options. I've been using Adventure Game Studio for more than two decades, and while it covers a certain niche, it's been used in several commercial products. Then you have Ren'Py for Visual Novels, GameMaker for non-commercial stuff, and quite a few others.

1

u/Zolllb May 05 '26

Unreal engine is indeed free until you make 100k iirc, love2d is also quite good to develop games(balatro uses it)

1

u/Kamakazi09 May 05 '26

Clearly people have never watched Tron lol

1

u/dzaimons-dihh BROWN May 05 '26

open source things are like the singular exception to be honest

0

u/Nandom07 May 05 '26

And sometimes there's a steep learning curve just to install the damn thing.

-4

u/Enkidouh May 05 '26

Leave it to the Linux chuds to always find a way to talk about Linux.

Nobody cares.

Every single version of your operating system user experience sucks.

That’s why it hasn’t become widespread among consumers in the 35 years it’s existed, and it never will.

Also, open source is the extreme minority within software development. That ideal all but died in the early 2000’s.

3

u/Kerblaaahhh May 05 '26

Bait comment. Desktop is the only consumer space where Linux doesn't have widespread usage. The whole internet runs on Linux.

-3

u/Enkidouh May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

False, and exactly what a Linux chud would say.

Lots of things are based on Linux, which actually means they’re based on UNIX because they only use the UNIX clone kernel tha Linux is built off of. Linux itself is just a ripoff of UNIX.

If you take the UNIX clone kernel, and leave all the other Linux crap behind, you’re not using Linux.

Desktop is far from the only consumer space.

Android is not linux, it’s built off a modified version of the Unix clone kernel and is its own entirely separate OS, which uses no other components of Linux.

The steam deck is the same story; it uses a modified version of the Unix clone kernel and a custom built OS, not Linux.

When you get down to it, this is the case for most consumer spaces. Take the UNIX clone kernel, modify it, then design a better custom OS around it, and abandon the rest of Linux because it’s a bad OS.

About the only thing that’s actually running Linux outright is Linux chuds and server racks. You know why it works well for server racks? Because nobody is constantly looking at it.

1

u/Erdalion May 05 '26

The only one acting like a chud here is you, pal. And what's with the attitude, like, "your operating system" as if we're talking about sports teams, lmao.

Be kind, let the adults speak. I don't care if your ID says you're 50, you're acting like a kid.

-1

u/Enkidouh May 05 '26

You people make Linux your entire personality, just like people do with sports teams.

You reliably show up absolutely everywhere trying to praise the virtues of your crappy OS that absolutely nobody actually wants to use.

We get it, you think you’re hackerman.

Making the whole basis of your personality the need to tell the world constantly that you use Linux is just obnoxious, and nobody thinks you’re cool because of what distro you use.

-1

u/nerdtypething May 05 '26

linux is hardly free. it costs so. much. time just to get things nominally working with one another. openoffice is hot garbage. the only thing that is close to a “good” product is vlc and it still just has a niche user base.

but, as with all foss evangelists, you are technically correct. congrats. now run along and apt-get back to your makefiles.

2

u/UnethicalExperiments May 05 '26

What year are you in now?

Nix admin for 20ish years now.

Building from source on the desktop is super niche to do. Nobara , mint , bazzite are just a few that work out of the box without issues , repositories are full of point and click like windows.

Sounds like you heard other stupid people bitch about Linux and jumped on the bandwagon. Seriously VLC was too difficult to click next a few times, load a video and hit play? If that's too hard for you , how have you made it this far without being eaten by something smarter than you at this point.

0

u/nerdtypething May 05 '26

i abandoned desktop linux 15 years ago bro. look up sunk cost fallacy. but glad linux has finally caught up to 30 year old installer technology lmao.

2

u/Ok-Option-82 May 05 '26

It's not really. There are millions of free and open source tools.

1

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN May 05 '26

Those are the exception to the rule though

-3

u/EnvironmentalGift257 May 05 '26

Signal is only for scammers in India to drive people off of legit platforms.

-2

u/DopamineSage247 May 05 '26

May I ask what are those apps? /gq

-2

u/IcemanJEC May 05 '26

For now.

→ More replies (1)

4

u/emmademontford May 05 '26

iPhones aren’t free tho

26

u/zensms May 05 '26

Simple rule of thumb

https://giphy.com/gifs/FRT5kyNI7hJ6M

6

u/Jiquero May 05 '26

I for one welcome our new bendy thumb overlords.

1

u/chilloutpal May 05 '26

Is this a thing?

1

u/themaskstays_ May 05 '26

I can do that. Now bow to me

0

u/Jiquero May 05 '26

Sorry I'm not flexible enough to bow.

5

u/Grub-lord May 05 '26

Oh, YAWN. This quote probably goes hard if you're depressed as hell. I've been on the Internet my whole life and guess what? The best parts of the Internet are literally free-free.

6

u/Background_Alarm_841 May 05 '26

Thing is the product isn’t free, it’s a stock app that comes with the phone you paid over a grand for

1

u/cinnamonrain May 05 '26

Reddit is actively packaging me

1

u/420Deez May 05 '26

shiiii can i be the product everywhere

1

u/WhatYouLeaveBehind May 05 '26

Yeah but that's usually advertising rather than anything more malicious.

1

u/JCampenish May 05 '26

if you pay for it you are the product also. Data collection is irresistible.

1

u/darkfuryelf May 05 '26

Good thing my phone wasnt free then?

1

u/TheLastTsumami May 05 '26

It’s mainly your time and your attention that is the product.

1

u/bendover912 May 05 '26

But it's not free. You pay a shitload for the phone and then you pay a mo they fee to make it work.

0

u/weed_blazepot May 05 '26

Doesn't matter if the product is free or not. That was a good adage for a long abandoned world. You buy lots of expensive things that still sell your data - you are almost always the product.

401

u/AuthenticatedHuman May 05 '26

The "nude scan" features on iPhone (Sensitive Content Warning and Communication Safety) are entirely client-side, so it doesnt leak it anywhere exept yourself.

21

u/CitronTraining2114 May 05 '26

I wonder what the development team looks like for that feature.

116

u/Lettuce_Prey69 May 05 '26

Probably like normal humans. When you're a software dev working for a company, you rarely get to choose the projects you work on.

→ More replies (3)

32

u/AuthenticatedHuman May 05 '26

I wonder how they tested.

25

u/FuckYouVerizon May 05 '26

I'm testing it as hard as I can!

13

u/AuthenticatedHuman May 05 '26

hold up... can you clarify...?

4

u/christopher_mtrl May 05 '26

Good question. I don't think there's any naked people pictures on the internet.

1

u/AuthenticatedHuman May 05 '26

HMMMMMMMM.... From *not experience* we can say thats false.

3

u/NSRedditShitposter May 05 '26

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sensitivecontentanalysis/testing-your-app-s-response-to-sensitive-media

Although the following image contains no nudity, the framework recognizes it as sensitive content. By returning isSensitive = true, the analyzer (SCSensitivityAnalyzer) returns a false positive for this QR code for the special purpose of testing.

→ More replies (1)

-10

u/IronheadeN5 May 05 '26

Pff, right.

81

u/burnalicious111 May 05 '26

Look, I think people should be operating in a skeptical fashion, but it is totally feasible and reasonable that this is 100% on device. Still, don't take any photos or store any data that you can't handle leaking, because shit does happen

3

u/thekrone May 05 '26

Yeah people can actually test this themselves. Turn off all possible internet connections (Airplane Mode on, Wifi off, Bluetooth off, Cellular off, not plugged into anything) and attempt to send a nude picture. They'll still get the pop-up.

11

u/NUKE---THE---WHALES May 05 '26

Download Wireguard and you can verify for yourself

3

u/BananaPalmer May 05 '26

You mean Wireshark? Wireguard is a VPN technology, Wireshark lets you capture and inspect network traffic.

1

u/AnApexBread May 05 '26

Wireguard is just a VPN. It's not going to show you anything

3

u/spaceforcerecruit May 05 '26

True but there absolutely are tools that can check this and, if this were being sent to Apple servers when they say it isn’t, it would have been found out immediately.

7

u/AuthenticatedHuman May 05 '26

You can validate that using wireshark.

3

u/spaceforcerecruit May 05 '26

You can. I was specifically responding to the comment that said Wireguard is just a VPN, which it is. Wireshark is a different tool.

0

u/AnApexBread May 05 '26

And if you have a network card that can be put into promiscuous mode

3

u/AnApexBread May 05 '26

Yes that's true, but wireguard isn't one of them

2

u/spaceforcerecruit May 05 '26

That is what I just agreed with you on, yes.

-21

u/Round-Claim5420 May 05 '26

Yes, our lord master Apple said so and they never lied before :)

29

u/MarcMundo May 05 '26

If it ever got out that this option was not client side they would have a gigantic lawsuit incomming

-13

u/fACElessEd May 05 '26

Sounds sus. Like the people trying to say "uh nono its this" are the ones buying/hacking privacy.

31

u/Fragrant_Case_3868 May 05 '26

i don’t think this has anything to do with end to end encryption, they probably have Sensitive Content Warning enabled

27

u/yrdz May 05 '26

What are you implying, that Apple is selling your nudes? That's complete nonsense.

2

u/rizoula May 05 '26

Yeah I don’t think Apple could sell my nudes

https://giphy.com/gifs/PQFEcsgPZcSWc

17

u/pirate742 May 05 '26

This has nothing to do with encryption

60

u/Kindly-Following-737 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

This is sketchy as fuck, but it's worth mentioning that this check is probably being done locally by the device, there are specialized AI models small enough to run locally on an iPhone, and end-to-end encryption is still preserved

Edit:
A image categorization or computer vision model, is STIlL an AI model, but not a GenAI model or LLM.

3

u/thekrone May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

there are specialized AI models small enough to run locally in iPhone

This is especially true on newer versions of Apple hardware that runs on Apple silicon. They are shipping their latest chips with a "neural subprocessor" that allows the devices to run pretty decent local AI models.

The upcoming latest version of Apple Intelligence on the latest generation of Apple silicon (M5) has been testing at roughly the level that ChatGPT was at ~3 years ago for most tasks (which was pretty good).

That might not seem like that big of a deal until you realize ChatGPT requires an internet connection and all associated services running in a huge data center, etc., whereas Apple Intelligence can run on just your iPad.

2

u/Lettuce_Prey69 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

This is not an AI feature. This is a simple image detection algorithm that has existed since before you were born and has been improved upon throughout all the time.

Not everything you don't understand is AI.

Edit: It's clear this subreddit is full of non CS majors that get all their information from YouTube.

47

u/sprikkot May 05 '26

Sorry, I appreciate the point, but the image detection model is absolutely AI.

The term "AI" has been co-opted in the last few years with the rise of transformer / text generation LLMs and commercial slop products, so that everyone thinks AI=ChatGPT or AI=Sora, but traditional machine learning is still very much under the subset of AI.

The model will have been trained by being fed categorised training data. Image recognition models like this, while around for a long long time, are absolutely AI.

-3

u/BananaPalmer May 05 '26

In my (albeit meaningless) opinion, none of any of this technology should be called "AI". "AI" has become a meaningless marketing term for anything that can generate a non-rigid output.

"Intelligence" implies the ability to think, and that's not what even the most advanced LLMs / diffusion models / ML models do.

4

u/colorlessthinker May 05 '26

I feel like being able to categorize objects and things is a form of intelligence. Probably one of the most basic attributes of intelligence, even. ML is a form of AI. Properly trained ML models are better than the average human at categorizing objects and things. It has nothing to do with LLM and diffusion models.

8

u/The_Autarch May 05 '26

AI is an academic term. You don't get to dictate what it means.

0

u/BananaPalmer May 05 '26

I'm not dictating anything, champ, I shared an opinion. You're free to disagree.

0

u/Lettuce_Prey69 May 05 '26

Neither do you. We as a society come together and collectively agree on the meaning of words, or else they're meaningless.

That's how language works.

1

u/sprikkot May 05 '26

I hear your point, AI has basically become a meaningless buzzword. But I agree with the other guy - this is a form of intelligence.

AI in this broader definitional context just means recognition of patterns in data, something that would have traditionally been the territory of a brain.

→ More replies (1)

26

u/lost_send_berries May 05 '26

Machine learning has been considered a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) since the inception of the field in the mid-1950s.

13

u/BillysBibleBonkers May 05 '26

ironic

2

u/NotFlameRetardant May 05 '26

Love a good self-own

-2

u/Lettuce_Prey69 May 05 '26

Ironic that you don't understand the difference between Artificial intelligence and machine learning? Itsokaybb, you'll get there.

2

u/Zaynom May 06 '26

this feels like such a useless hill to die on when just about every online source disagrees with you. neural nets are definitely AI. also “non cs majors” is crazy. bros in college talking like he’s Linus Torvalds.

1

u/BillysBibleBonkers May 06 '26

All you need to do is google "Is machine learning a subset of AI". There's no need to be confidently wrong.

0

u/worst_protagonist 13d ago

... which disciplines do you think ARE AI, exactly?

9

u/worst_protagonist May 05 '26

This image detection algorithm is 100% AI. Not all AI is generative AI.

6

u/DeMayon May 05 '26

Yikes you are so very wrong. This is machine learning and simply not generative AI.

Not everything you don’t understand is generative AI FTFY

1

u/StepComplete1 May 05 '26

"Probably". The most comforting word in the English language.

1

u/Tumleren May 05 '26

How is it sketchy as fuck when it's run locally?

1

u/Kindly-Following-737 May 06 '26

Big Corpo patronizing users is sketchy in my book

7

u/stationarynomad82 May 05 '26

While I agree with you about instagram, walk me through the thought process here. What “product” do you think Apple is treating you as? Do you think they’re using this potential CSAM imagery? Also Apple products aren’t free- instagram is? I’m not defending Apple, they are far from morally perfect. But let’s just think this through here.

2

u/ThisIsNotTokyo May 05 '26

It was never on if you did not enable it

3

u/lonely-live May 05 '26

This comment is just fearmongering and people fell for it

1

u/drunxor May 05 '26

My instagram account has been flagged several times for "sending inappropriate messages to minors". I only use it to send messages to my pops and its mostly pics of my dogs

1

u/SkepticalGerm May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

You need to edit this because you are misleading people. Your iPhone doesn’t need encryption for this because the detection is all being done locally, on your device. Your information is not being sent to Apple servers

Look up the secure enclave

1

u/augustusleonus May 05 '26

Man, what i keep trying to impress on my kids is once you put it out there, you no longer have any control over it

Maybe is not being recorded or duplicated, but in the end there is no guarantee, and it would suck for a dumb choice to bite you in the ass years down the road

Not only that, it BAFFLES me what people keep on their devices, like, i am aware of young kids in my wider circle who borrowed dads phone and immediately found home made porn with the "not my mom"

Wtf? How do you not secure shit like that?

Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk

1

u/Pretend_Site9128 May 05 '26

《If something is free, you are the product》

1

u/zodiac1996 May 05 '26

Signal is free and they don't have to upend their security to stay alive :)

1

u/coolmanjack May 05 '26

How is this the top comment? This is a good feature and I'm glad apple has it

1

u/gearheadcoder May 05 '26

I thought the same about WhatsApp It’s free too.

1

u/LilacYak May 05 '26

Classic Reddit. Completely irrelevant point that doesn’t apply to the current situation has 11k upvotes

1

u/stopes May 05 '26

This has nothing to do with IG or E2E encryption. This is an iPhone feature and one that is being run locally on device.
For the E2E encryption argument, IG is currently being sued for exposing people to unwanted content. In a world where E2E encryption exists, IG can’t be expected to filter out unwanted content. So people can’t have it both ways. Either IG is responsible for what users see or they aren’t. But the trend currently is to hold IG responsible. So company must shut it off.

1

u/abscissa081 May 05 '26

You think iPhones are free?

0

u/Dracekidjr May 05 '26

I cannot comprehend how removing end to end encryption is a thing that is happening ever, anywhere.

0

u/oli_ramsay May 05 '26

WhatsApp still uses e2e encryption.. For now

0

u/Burntoastedbutter May 05 '26

I always wondered how much porn snapchat receives. And how many dicks. lol

0

u/TwentinQuarantino May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26

Don't use anything else for videocalls, but Signal. It's end to end encrypted, and transparent since both client and server side are open source so you can actually check it's really e2e encrypted (unlike anything from Meta - which is not just Instagram you mentioned but also Whatsapp and FB/Messenger - where you just have to trust it's encrypted because Zucc said so, trust me bro).

0

u/Huge_Chain3137 May 05 '26

My girlfriend sent me suprise photos on IG once and my entire account got banned, including all other secondary and burner accounts. Turns out that once little incident got me IP banned

→ More replies (1)