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Apple Uses Machine Learning To Chronicle All the Bra Pics On Your iPhone (vice.com) 115

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-not-polite-to-stare dept.
New submitter bumblebaetuna shares a report from Motherboard: It's already well known that iOS 11 included some advanced updates to the phone's artificial intelligence, and this includes improving the photo app's ability to identify and categorize what is in each of your photos. There are thousands of objects the phone can identify, ranging from "abacus" to "zucchini." Weirdly, despite not having categories for, say, "nude," or "underwear," there are multiple categories for bra: brassiere, bandeau, bandeaus, bra, bras, and brassieres. Searching for this folder in your photos app may reveal an unexpected surprise. Though there are some pretty archaic terms like "homburg," "habiliment," and "danseuse," the "bra" category is unusual compared to the other quotidian labels the app slaps on your photos, and is as risque as the terms get.
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Apple Uses Machine Learning To Chronicle All the Bra Pics On Your iPhone More

Apple Uses Machine Learning To Chronicle All the Bra Pics On Your iPhone

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  • Maybe Apple has a dirty mind (Score:4, Informative)

    by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @06:20PM (#55466359)

    "Danseuse", mentioned in the summary and TFA, is French for a ballet dancer. Also, sometimes, a lady of negotiable virtue.

  • So that's what she's doing in there (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @06:21PM (#55466375)
    That's what Siri is doing in there, sorting my photos... She gives me the creeps....

  • A homburg hat might be obscure among the general population, but I would not be surprised if there's a disproportionate overlap between those that actually do know what a homburg hat is and have one featured in one's photos, and iPhone users that actually would seek to use these entirely unnecessary functions.

    • A homburg hat might be obscure among the general population, but I would not be surprised if there's a disproportionate overlap between those that actually do know what a homburg hat is and have one featured in one's photos, and iPhone users that actually would seek to use these entirely unnecessary functions.

      Keep in mind that one person's "Entirely Unnecessary" is another person's "The coolest thing EVAR!

      The world is a different place when you're designing a PRODUCT for the masses, dumbass!

  • Is how they arrived at the list of categories [medium.com] that it caters for. You'd think it would make sense to support terms that people commonly search for (which might explain "bras", but "Floppy disks"?)

  • You got it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @06:35PM (#55466433)
    I don't want my phone analyzing my pictures. Fuck Apple.

  • Can it identify foods? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Can it identify a hotdog?

    Hotdog
    Not hotdog
    Eggplant

  • What's up brah? https://www.urbandictionary.co... [urbandictionary.com] Also, there's a comet diving towards the sun. https://www.space.com/33651-co... [space.com]

  • I'm sure outsourcing to India would be cheaper, perhaps even gain profits

  • in their photo apps and cloud photo album... I use it like every time I try to find one of my (10!)^256! pictures

    • Re:Google do just that since 2 last years (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @07:33PM (#55466669) Journal

      Google does not do this. Google does not use end-to-end encryption in storing your data. This allows them to analyze your photos in the cloud. In return for opening your entire photo world up to them (and anyone who can pry it out of them legally or illegally), they do give you some nice features. I enjoy the assistant-generated collages, animations, and movies.

      Apple, on the other hand, stores photos using end-to-end encryption. Their cloud servers cannot analyze them. They are performing this analysis on the device. And the results of the analysis are kept under the same security as the photos.

      Google may start doing photo analysis on the Pixel 2 with its new AI chip soon, but they are not now. When they do, it is still unlikely that they will give up on being able to access your photos while they are on their server.

      • Apple, on the other hand, stores photos using end-to-end encryption.

        One problem I have with this is that the default passcode is limited to a 6-digit number (digits only). You can change the passcode settings to enable alphanumerics, but the default is just digits.

        Given this default lack of entropy, and the fact that the secret keys in the hardware are known to Apple, it's trivial for the company to break the encryption on the vast majority of devices if they really want to. I'm not suggesting they're secretly complying with the government, but they probably do mine the "

        • Apple, on the other hand, stores photos using end-to-end encryption.

          One problem I have with this is that the default passcode is limited to a 6-digit number (digits only). You can change the passcode settings to enable alphanumerics, but the default is just digits.

          Given this default lack of entropy, and the fact that the secret keys in the hardware are known to Apple, it's trivial for the company to break the encryption on the vast majority of devices if they really want to. I'm not suggesting they're secretly complying with the government, but they probably do mine the "easy" information for statistical reasons just like every other company.

          So they allow people that don't really care to keep their passcode simple, and those who are more sensitive to security to have a Horse Stapler Passphrase.

          Explain to me why CHOICE isn't a Good Thing(tm)?

          • Explain to me why CHOICE isn't a Good Thing(tm)?

            Strawman.

            The point is that the default setting is designed to keep entropy low, giving people a false sense of security. Some user know this and can "enable" stronger passwords, but most people don't know this, which is why I pointed it out (and apparently got downvoted for simply doing so). Information is harmful, kids.

            • Explain to me why CHOICE isn't a Good Thing(tm)?

              Strawman.

              The point is that the default setting is designed to keep entropy low, giving people a false sense of security. Some user know this and can "enable" stronger passwords, but most people don't know this, which is why I pointed it out (and apparently got downvoted for simply doing so). Information is harmful, kids.

              No. Your entire premise is a Strawman argument.

              • No, the argument is that if I want a simple, easy-to-remember passcode, I can decide that for myself. The phone should not be limiting me to a simple passcode at setup, and make me jump through hoops to "unlock" stronger passcodes and have to change it later. That's idiotic and very obviously counterproductive for security.

                • No, the argument is that if I want a simple, easy-to-remember passcode, I can decide that for myself. The phone should not be limiting me to a simple passcode at setup, and make me jump through hoops to "unlock" stronger passcodes and have to change it later. That's idiotic and very obviously counterproductive for security.

                  Bullshit.

                  If you consider flipping a switch in the Settings App to be "Jumping through hoops", then I pity you for feeling put-upon to have to jump through hoops like "pressing Accept on your phone just to answer a call", or "entering your PIN to access your bank website AFTER you already logged-in with your username and password", right?

                  I know who you are: You're that guy that makes me create a password with so many special features that it becomes TOTALLY un-remember-able, and so I end up HAVING to write i

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Google does not use end-to-end encryption in storing your data.

        They do. I suspect you don't know what end-to-end encryption is. It just means that the connection between the two endpoints is encrypted, and they do use that (HTTPS) when storing your photos in the cloud if you enabled cloud sync.

        Also, the image recognition features are done on the phone. They do additional stuff in the cloud like the collages and auto-photoshopping, but the image recognition stuff works just fine without cloud sync enabled. Same with Google Translate (with databases downloaded for offlin

      • Google does not do this. Google does not use end-to-end encryption in storing your data. This allows them to analyze your photos in the cloud. In return for opening your entire photo world up to them (and anyone who can pry it out of them legally or illegally), they do give you some nice features. I enjoy the assistant-generated collages, animations, and movies.

        Apple, on the other hand, stores photos using end-to-end encryption. Their cloud servers cannot analyze them. They are performing this analysis on the device. And the results of the analysis are kept under the same security as the photos.

        Google may start doing photo analysis on the Pixel 2 with its new AI chip soon, but they are not now. When they do, it is still unlikely that they will give up on being able to access your photos while they are on their server.

        Something interesting http://www.mo5talf.com/ [mo5talf.com] Internet news, software, applications, games, blogger, profit from the Internet

    • My phone only has 5 categories, I was surprised when I realized it could do this. I don't upload photos to google, and disabled that setting. So a bit annoying that it's going to waste my phone's already miniscule battery life on something like this.

      And I do turn off indexing, face tagging, etc. I used to think my computer had a virus because it was always accessing the hard drive even when I wasn't touching the computer, until I realized it was the indexing turned on. Still this happens sometimes with e

  • It's "on your phone" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @07:19PM (#55466607) Journal

    The article points to Apple's support site [apple.com] that states clearly "When you search your photos, all of the face recognition and scene and object detection are done completely on your device."

    It is great that the AI is finally moving off the cloud and onto the device. This is where it belongs. We should be highly praising any software that implements personal assistance features like this locally. They have the potential of eventually supporting personal clouds made up of nothing but my devices with cradle to grave encryption.

    Apple's provision of end-to-end encryption of user data stored in their cloud forces this architecture. They don't have the ability to decrypt your photos stored in iCloud and analyze them on a cloud server. So they have to do it on the device. Kudos to Apple for taking the high road instead of the easy road.

    We should have no concerns whatsoever about what it is capable of recognizing. Ultimately, I want it to be capable of accurately recognizing anything in the pictures. Why not? Both the analysis and the photos are stored with the same security. If an attacker can get the analysis, then they can just skip that and get the photos instead.

    The important thing is secure storage of both the picture and any analysis of it and that neither ever leaves my device pool at any point in time without explicit intentional action on my part such as "sharing" a photo. Apple is almost all of the way there. I'd like to have the further option of pulling the encrypted cloud storage out of the picture and just have my devices automatically synchronize to each other.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The article points to Apple's support site that states clearly "When you search your photos, all of the face recognition and scene and object detection are done completely on your device."

      It is great that the AI is finally moving off the cloud and onto the device. This is where it belongs. We should be highly praising any software that implements personal assistance features like this locally. They have the potential of eventually supporting personal clouds made up of nothing but my devices with cradle to g

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      And to be fair, Google does the same thing. Image recognition on the device, allowing natural language search. Optional cloud storage.

    • Yes, it sorts photos, for the small number of people who care about it. But it's not AI, it's a very specific use of image processing hardware. AI would be adaptable, it would let you sort by a category that you actually care about. But I certainly would not want to waste my battery life on such a feature. It's a friggin phone, maybe expend some resources on making the sound better for voices.

      • The human brain is a lot of separate little neural nets only a fraction of which get used at a time depending on what is necessary. Granted, the way the neural networks being used for object recognition now work is poor. They need to break up the steps into many little ones like the brain does instead of training one big network to go all the way from pixels to objects. But, AI will appear someday, possibly even unexpectedly, when we start putting thousands of these little neural networks together with othe

  • what about the bro? a bet there's a large percentage of slashdotter's that feel the same way

  • For now your average compact camera, SLR is not been evil.
    Take your own images, enjoy them and keep them well away from the cloud.
  • Seriously. Did the last 11.1 update on my iphone. What's the first and main improvement of that update that Apple brags about? "70 new emoji"! Meanwhile many bugs are left unaddressed and my gps is still dancing around some location which is not where I am. Really, Apple, get the work done right first and try to inject some new features after that has been successfully done.

    • I think 3000 less emoji would be a feature that would motivate me to consider using that product.
      I turn off GPS, I'm annoying that it still knows where I am and that it keeps asking me all the time if I want to turn GPS back on.

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