Apple has been categorising your pictures for a few years now, but it took a while for folks to figure out what that means. For example, pick up your iPhone right now and search for “bra” or “brassiere” and see what comes up.
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Twitter user @ellieeewbu posted about the feature early this morning, freaking out about the implications of such categorisation.
ATTENTION ALL GIRLS ALL GIRLS!!! Go to your photos and type in the ‘Brassiere’ why are apple saving these and made it a folder!!?!!?😱😱😱😱
— ells (@ellieeewbu) October 30, 2017
It might sound pretty gnarly, but this is a pretty benign categorisation of photos that happens on your Apple device, not in the cloud. It was introduced in June last year when the Photos app was given the ability to recognise objects and scenes via machine learning.
At the time of its release, the app could recognise seven facial expressions and 4,432 keywords, including the aforementioned “bra” and “brassiere”.
But as The Verge points out, there doesn’t appear to be any mention of bloke’s boxers or briefs in the full list of keywords, which is weird considering they even went as far to include “corset” and “girdle”. Why go so far on female clothing but not on mens’?
Google Photos has been using a similar feature since 2015, which is probably more of a concern seeing as your pictures are both stored and categorised on Google’s own servers.
While some have expressed their concerns of the security of such features, others are just happy to be able to find what matters.
I have folder with adult cats pic.twitter.com/8GywN6d7zL
— Anna (@annaivanovai) October 30, 2017
you can also type in “dog” and it brings u to all ur puppy pics. ur welcome pic.twitter.com/e1ESHExob9
— White Rice (@SmileyRyleighh) October 30, 2017
I just did a search and that’s my dad arguing with a monkey under ‘common’ @ellieeewbu @delafro_ pic.twitter.com/VjmV3E3OdJ
— ???????????? (@Tylerlizzie) October 30, 2017
More importantly: pic.twitter.com/e45Uz4pGud
— emily lynne (@TheEmilyLynne) October 30, 2017
My phone thinks daschunds are called badger dogs?? ???????? pic.twitter.com/eKqyh1nHVA
— Chase (@astron0micaIIy) October 30, 2017
At the end of the day, this doesn’t mean anyone can access your Photos app, all it means is you can search it using a bunch of keywords. That’s it. Some of the words they chose, however, are questionable.
