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Even without a requirement to proactively scan, Apple is surely expanding its ML stack on photos to categorize and describe photos and persons in them. Is that
by mbauman 5y ago
Even without a requirement to proactively scan, Apple is surely expanding its ML stack on photos to categorize and describe photos and persons in them.
Is that not the simpler explanation for this?
- acdha 5y agoThey can already do this now for every iCloud photo and the protocol described is elaborately protecting a small number of hashes. It seems unlikely that the PR brushfire from this is better than simply pointing that classifier on all of the photos already on Apple’s servers.
- mbauman 5y agoThat's not what I'm saying. Apple is required by law to report images if they have "actual knowledge" of CSAM. Courts aren't too kind about superficial technicalities like "that output label wasn't trained" when Apple is doing on-device ML classification of pictures to identify content. By proactively scanning for selective hashes they can say they're doing something without being required to report a less-accurate ML output. That's also why this only applies if connected to iCloud; otherwise they don't have "knowledge" of it.