You may recall Apple’s un-Apple-like moment a few weeks ago, when users discovered their photos were being scanned by Apple Intelligence to match landmarks. Users had not been told, and it caused a furor with security experts. Google is now going through something of the same. And again, it’s not the technology, it’s the secrecy.
Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search sends parts of photos to the cloud to match against a global index of points of interest. It’s very privacy-preserving, but as crypto expert Matthew Green complained, “it’s very frustrating when you learn about a service two days before New Years and you find that it’s already been enabled on your phone
Google’s awkward moment relates to its SafetyCore, an Android system update that enables on-device image scanning that could do all kinds of things, but is currently focused on blurring or flagging sensitive content. It’s seemingly even more private than Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search, given that it’s all on-device. So we’re told.
------ Post added on Feb 28, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search sends parts of photos to the cloud to match against a global index of points of interest. It’s very privacy-preserving, but as crypto expert Matthew Green complained, “it’s very frustrating when you learn about a service two days before New Years and you find that it’s already been enabled on your phone
Google’s awkward moment relates to its SafetyCore, an Android system update that enables on-device image scanning that could do all kinds of things, but is currently focused on blurring or flagging sensitive content. It’s seemingly even more private than Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search, given that it’s all on-device. So we’re told.
------ Post added on Feb 28, 2025 at 2:28 AM