iOS 18 reportedly sharing photo data with Apple by default: here’s how you can turn it off | Tech Tips

Apple promotes ‘privacy’ as one of the strongest features of its products, mainly iPhones. However, the newly introduced iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia are reportedly sharing photo data with Apple by default and also without users’ explicit consent. This raises serious privacy concerns. Read on for complete details.

Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search

• Going into the story, developer Jeff Johnson reports that iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia are sharing photo data with Apple through a feature called ‘Enhanced Visual Search’
• For context, this feature is aimed at improving the Photos app experience by offering more context about the landmarks captured in the photos.
• While this functionality aids in a better understanding of the locations, it could also mean that data in photos is shared with Apple for processing.
• As per the developer, the feature operates on two levels: first where it relies on machine learning to detect/analyse landmarks in photos.
• When a landmark is detected, the device creates a vector embedding (a digital representation of the image’s characteristics), which is then encrypted and sent to Apple servers and compared with a global database maintained by the company to identify the landmark.
• As said, the feature is enabled by default, which means users are sharing the photo data without knowing. This raises privacy concerns among general users.
• For what it’s worth since only vector embeddings are sent to Apple’s database for identifying/comparing landmarks, Apple claims that photo data is not explicitly identifiable. However, it still involves sharing image data with the company.

How to disable Enhanced Visual Search?

Thankfully this is an opt-in feature, meaning you can disable it if you want. Here’s how you can do it.

• If you have an iPhone that’s running iOS 18, head to settings and scroll down to Apps.
• From here, scroll down and select ‘Photos‘.
• Now, scroll down to the bottom and disable ‘Enhanced Visual Search’.

• On MacBooks that are running macOS Sequoia, head to Photos app > Settings (from the top menu) > and disable Enhanced Visual Search.

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