Apple Says It'll Use Apple Maps Look Around Photos To Train AI (theverge.com) 11
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sometime earlier this month, Apple updated a section of its website that discloses how it collects and uses imagery for Apple Maps' Look Around feature, which is similar to Google Maps' Street View, as spotted by 9to5Mac. A newly added paragraph reveals that, beginning in March 2025, Apple will be using imagery and data collected during Look Around surveys to "train models powering Apple products and services, including models related to image recognition, creation, and enhancement."
Apple collects images and 3D data to enhance and improve Apple Maps using vehicles and backpacks (for pedestrian-only areas) equipped with cameras, sensors, and other equipment including iPhones and iPads. The company says that as part of its commitment to privacy, any images it captures that are published in the Look Around feature have faces and license plates blurred. Apple also says it will only use imagery with those details blurred out for training models. It does accept requests for those wanting their houses to also be blurred, but by default they are not.
Apple collects images and 3D data to enhance and improve Apple Maps using vehicles and backpacks (for pedestrian-only areas) equipped with cameras, sensors, and other equipment including iPhones and iPads. The company says that as part of its commitment to privacy, any images it captures that are published in the Look Around feature have faces and license plates blurred. Apple also says it will only use imagery with those details blurred out for training models. It does accept requests for those wanting their houses to also be blurred, but by default they are not.
Seems reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't often agree with things Apple does, but this is one of them. They are paying money to take the photos, using their own equipment. Why *not* use them to train AI?
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No privacy law or principle gives people an expectation of privacy when they are in...public. You know, like, visible from a car driving on a road. If you walk down a street pretty much anywhere, you are on camera dozens of times, whether you like it or not. I don't really see the problem.
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I worry more about the original images are still being stored than about the resulting model. An leaked image is an image containing me. The model outputs are in the worst case producing some lookalike, but not even labeling it with the place of where the person looking similar to the result was photographed.
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Yeah, it's almost as if this was the obvious thing to do, and really shouldn't have been a story.
Duplication of effort (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't this all stuff that Google has already done? Yes, I know that Google and Apple are competitors, so in the current regulatory environment they aren't required to cooperate and share data. But from the standpoint of efficiency and resource usage on the societal level, shouldn't we be trying to do stuff like this once and only once? Doubling the energy use, pollution, and CO2 to replicate data already collected strikes me as inefficient to say the least.
I understand the benefits of competition; those benefits require a certain amount of duplication / redundancy to allow for competition to select the best outcome. But in a situation like the one outlined in TFS, wouldn't we be better off legislating that such data must be part of the commons and therefore freely shared?
I guess the TL;DR version of what I just wrote is that, societally and legislatively, we need to start valuing and promoting 'co-opetition'.
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Isn't the whole Apple Maps thing duplicating the effort of Google Maps?
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That was the point I was trying to make - apologies if that wasn't clear.
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So....now you guys are bitching about too much competition in the marketplace?
The EU would like a word with you.
What's Their Intention? (Score:2)
No one is asking (Score:2)
...what are they training the AI to DO?