Enhanced Visual Search shares your photos with Apple by default

One developer pointed out that Apple’s photo Apps to share your iPhone photos with you apple By default, for iOS 18 A feature called enhanced visual search.

This is an old version of the extension Visual search functionthis can Identify objects in photosbut one privacy Setting notes in the app means it sends more data to Apple…

visual search

Visual Lookup (VLU) is an older feature designed to identify elements of a photo to provide relevant additional information. For example, if you take a picture of a dog, it will try to identify its breed.

VLUs can recognize anything from flowers to landmarks and do some pretty funky things. For example, Understanding Laundry Label Pictograms,even Tell you what’s wrong with your car.

VLU was first introduced in iOS 15, with Apple stating at the time that the feature Send “limited” data to its server.

when you use […] visual search […] Limited information will be sent to Apple to provide updated recommendations. Any information sent to Apple does not identify you but is instead associated with a randomly rotating 15-minute identifier generated by your device.

Apple notes that this includes location data.

Enhanced visual search

As the name suggests, Enhanced Visual Search (EVS) is an enhanced version of this feature. Developer Jeff Johnson emphasized in a blog post This has its own privacy statement, which means more material will be sent.

EVS-specific privacy instructions can be found in the Settings application:

Settings > Apps > Photos > Scroll down to the bottom

The note reads:

Allows this device to privately match places in your photos to a global index maintained by Apple, so you can search by nearly any landmark or place|interest.

The tone of Johnson’s post was quite aggressive, objecting to the fact that EVS is enabled by default.

This user never asked to “enrich” my device experience by calling Cupertino. This choice was made silently by Apple, without my consent.

From my own perspective, computational privacy is simple: if something happens entirely on my computer, then it’s private, but if my computer transmits data to the computer manufacturer, then it’s not private , or at least not completely private […] Apple disrespects users and their preferences by enabling this “feature” without asking. I never want my iPhone to call Apple.

Remember this ad? “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.” This is obviously a lie.

9to5Mac’s Opinion

It’s interesting that Apple feels the need to place special emphasis on the data sent by EVS, but the company does seem to place as much emphasis on protecting our privacy as it does on VLU.

Enhanced visual search in photos lets you search photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately compares the locations in your photos to a global index maintained by Apple on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides the IP address. This prevents Apple from knowing the information in your photos.

Personally, I’m happy to leave it on, but you can turn it off if needed.

One piece of data no What is shared is the location. This was evident as several of my London skyline photos were misidentified as various other cities, including San Francisco, Montreal, and Shanghai.

pass: edge. Photo: Ben Lovejoy/9to5Mac. background: Maxim Berg exist Not splashed.