Apple has been categorizing your 'bra' photos for a year
Apple's AI has been quietly analyzing photos to recognize "brassieres" and automatically categorize images featuring bras into a group in the iPhone's Photos app. AI is fed millions of photos of various things like animals, cars, trees, etc. during training; Apple also apparently included "brassieres". This was discovered by a Twitter user who said searching "brassiere" in Photos app showed grouped images of bras.
AI engine could recognize bras correctly in most photos
After Twitter user "ellieeewbu" highlighted the issue, several other women responded to her tweet and posted screenshots with similar results in the Photos app. However, the searches returned various images; in some cases, the app showed pictures of lingerie, bikinis, etc. while memes were shown in some other cases. Surprisingly, the AI succeeded in identifying bras in most cases.
Many don't know about image recognition feature
After the issue was discovered, many users concerned about privacy criticized Apple on social networking platforms. However, what's more concerning than the "brassiere" category is the fact that many people did not even know that Apple's image categorization (recognition) feature exists.
Apple updated Photos with deep learning last year
Apple introduced "image recognition" feature in Photos in Jun'16 with iOS 10; Photos was updated for object and scene detection. The AI is trained to detect objects, people, etc. it is familiar with and group (categorize) them into folders when users search, for example, cars, dogs, beach, flowers, etc. However, Apple earlier said that object detection is locally done on the phone.
Photos App recognizes scenes, specific objects: Apple
Apple's website says: "The Photos app makes it easy to find photos of an exact person, place, or thing. Advanced face recognition and computer vision technology lets you search your photos by who and what's in them."
Users concerned Apple may be saving images
While many users are concerned about privacy, it is important to note that Photos AI's object/scene recognition is completely done locally, on the device. Also, the app identifies images and creates "categories" and not folders. The images are stored only on the phone (or iCloud, depending on user's settings) and not anywhere else. However, Photos doesn't have an option to disable the AI.
Google does the same thing
It turns out Apple isn't the only company using "brassiere" as an image category. People found that upon searching "brassiere" on Google Photos, it displayed similar results. And, the issue with Google Photos is, images are stored on the cloud (its servers) and not locally.
