iOS 18 is one of the biggest updates released for the iPhonebringing many new additions to the table, including Apple Intelligence. The company also pays great attention to the privacy and security of user data, saying that the content is not seen by Apple with end-to-end encryption. It has now been discovered that iOS 18 shares photo data with Apple by default, making the contents of your images visible to Apple.
iOS 18 and macOS 15 share photo data with Apple by default, but you can turn it off
As mentioned, iOS 18 and macOS 15 share users’ photo data with Apple through Enhanced Visual Search. If you’re not familiar with this feature, Enhanced Visual Search was introduced with the release of iOS 15, which recognizes objects in your photos and sends them to Apple by default. You have the option to disable the feature via the Settings app on your iPhone as well as Mac.
Promoter Jeff Johnson made the discovery, claiming that iOS 18 and macOS 15 Sequia share photo data with Apple through a feature called Enhanced Visual Search, and do so in a complex way. The feature allows the device to detect certain landmarks for better context in the Photos app. While this is a rather nice addition, Apple collects user data without their consent, which could pose a problem for the company as well as the end user. If you are not familiar with the mechanism, go to Settings > Apps > Photos > and tap Turn off Improved visual search to disable it.
Developer Jeff Johnson says the feature works on two distinct levels, relying on machine learning to detect landmarks or objects in photos and creating vector embedding, which is a digital representation of the features of the monument or object. Since the feature is enabled by default, users can send photo data to Apple to identify landmarks in photos without knowing it. This raises privacy concerns for users, but you can easily turn off or turn off the enhanced visual search feature through the Settings app.
Any information sent to Apple does not identify you and is associated with a random, rotating identifier generated by the device for 15 minutes.
Although photo data is shared with Apple, I personally would leave the feature enabled, as the company does a lot to protect user privacy. We’ll be sharing additional details related to the story, so be sure to stick around. Apple hasn’t shared a direct response to the privacy concerns, but we’ll keep an eye out for official statements. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.