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The release of iOS 18 brought a raft of AI features to the platform, but it may have also added a setting that flies in the face of Apple’s alleged privacy focus. A new feature of iOS and macOS called Enhanced Visual Search automatically shares photo data with Apple to help identify landmarks. While Apple claims to preserve user privacy in this feature, it still isn’t sitting right with iPhone and Mac users.
Enhanced Visual Search was added to Apple’s services with little fanfare—developer Jeff Johnson spotted Enhanced Visual Search in his system settings but was unable to find more than a few passing mentions online. Indeed, Apple has only talked about the feature in a privacy notice and a technical blog post on encryption.
This feature relies on both local and cloud processing to help place your photos in the world. When you take a photo that might feature a landmark or point of interest, your phone generates vector embeddings that it sends to Apple. This is compared with a database of landmarks, with possible matches sent back to your device. The upshot is you can search for landmarks in your photos, as well as check the properties to see the identified landmarks.
Apple says this communication is encrypted and anonymous, but that might not be enough for everyone. Apple has embraced private computing on its devices, which it presents as a stark contrast to the way Google and Microsoft manage user data. However, here is Apple slyly exporting user data without any forewarning, something it has been accused of in the past.
Credit: Jeff Johnson
As Johnson rightly points out, if a feature sends data to the cloud, it’s not private. The functional privacy of this feature is entirely dependent on Apple’s software integrity. All it takes is one bug to potentially endanger user data, and Apple’s software has its fair share of flaws lately. Enhanced Visual Search is, at the very least, not in keeping with Apple’s tough talk about user privacy.
Apple has yet to respond to this new wave of user concerns, and there’s no guarantee it will have anything to say after the holiday. If you’re using iOS 18 or macOS 15 and want to keep Apple from trafficking your photo data, you can disable Enhanced Visual Search manually. On the iPhone or iPad, it’s under Settings > Apps > Photos. On macOS, the toggle is in the Photos app under Photos > Settings.