FaceTime in iOS 26 will freeze your call if someone starts undressing

45 pointsposted 7 months ago
by greenie_beans
(9to5mac.com)

41 Comments

shaky-carrousel

7 months ago

> In other words, everything happens on-device so Apple has no idea about the contents of your call.

Of course. And we have to trust that it is true and won't change depending on country and/or target.

msgodel

7 months ago

Don't know why this is downvoted. It's pretty difficult to even get a hold of the binary artifacts, much less the source, to verify.

For all you know they could very well be sending back embeddings or have it trigger recording.

deadfoxygrandpa

7 months ago

just dont grant internet access to face time and then you can be sure they arent uploading any recordings to their own servers

msgodel

7 months ago

lol It's been a while but I was under the impression Face Time was a VOIP app. That's a little useless without internet.

crossroadsguy

7 months ago

Naah. It works. You must be holding it wrong. Apple things have a special way to function. Sometimes you might feel something is broken but actually it’s you doing it wrong because that’s how it’s supposed to be.

type0

7 months ago

Off course it works, you just need to enable telepathy in your brain settings interface

EnPissant

7 months ago

Apple can just send the video somewhere without this feature existing.

shaky-carrousel

7 months ago

But now we know they have the technology to easily extract the most interesting parts, and have to trust they won't use it for their advantage.

mathiaspoint

7 months ago

That's so creepy. The machine shouldn't care.

qn9n

7 months ago

I mean it should to an extent, especially if a young person is using the device.

F7F7F7

7 months ago

Jefferey Toobin would have loved this feature during COVID.

HaZeust

7 months ago

That's like a third of the value proposition for FaceTiming with an S/O.

crossroadsguy

7 months ago

As part of Apple One subscription you can select upto three contacts in the nudity exception list.

nozzlegear

7 months ago

What about FaceTiming with grandma?

cbluth

7 months ago

I'm sure grandma knows how to undress, otherwise she wouldn't be a grandma?

nozzlegear

7 months ago

I'm guessing this feature is intended to prevent two scenarios: A) Grandma accidentally undressing during a FaceTime call (for instance, she forgot to hang up and the call kept recording); and B) Grandma getting on a call with a stranger who wanted to shock her by exposing themselves.

At least, that's what the child protection feature† in current versions of iOS is supposed to do.

† Which this feature clearly evolved from, and the article suggests that it might be a bug that has enabled this for adults as well.

bigyabai

7 months ago

You know, I'd really rather not have an AI model trained on detecting people stripping naked on any of my webcam-enabled devices.

NewJazz

7 months ago

Yeah makes you wonder how they are training these kinds of models... And who is doing that work.

Like the social media moderators who get exposed to mountains of horrifying content.

cedws

7 months ago

Jin Yang had to pivot from his Hotdog app.

mikece

7 months ago

So... use Signal or Telegram?

bigyabai

7 months ago

Will that delete the model? Can my consent be used to stop this functionality from being downloaded, besides buying a new phone?

m463

7 months ago

I feel this is a situation where half the world is unaware of a specific problem.

And the other half probably doesn't tell them.

bigyabai

7 months ago

Is the problem in question consent over how my phone works?

We're fast approaching the "yes it's bad for privacy but think of the kids" threshold between this and client-side scanning. Both can be used as instruments of blackmail from a sufficiently motivated threat actor.

TexanFeller

7 months ago

At most I could accept if this were a feature for children’s accounts that parents could choose to enable. I’m not sure I’m Ok with even that though because slippery slopes quite often start with “ think of the children”.

Audio/Video/Chat services should probably be demanded(maybe even required by law) to be dumb pipes that never filter ANYTHING.

vr46

7 months ago

No one cares about the children/elderly/disabled/etc until they want to argue over something

wrboyce

7 months ago

It says in the article that this is exactly what it is.

bigyarnn

7 months ago

Can we have a European version, that freezes if someone shows violence? Nobody cares about nudity.

1over137

7 months ago

This was my first thought too. US culture is weirdly prudish about nudity. I guess it comes from their flavour of Christianity? That’s fine of course, but they foist this on the whole world. ;(

mensetmanusman

7 months ago

Fundamentalism from a backlash to English Anglicism historically.

krapp

7 months ago

Which is weird when you consider an entire book of the Bible is a poem extolling the qualities and virtues of King Solomon's... er... "royal staff."

ncr100

7 months ago

Or if it detects a Trump image / video, anywhere on screen

- i'd love if a Trump image or video was replaced by a talking hamburger that simply said "Rabble rabble rabble"

rapjr9

7 months ago

Search for "Make America Kittens Again" for the browser extension.

defrost

7 months ago

So, .. no application for it in the remote consult medical domain then.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

commandersaki

7 months ago

Uh huh, you'll have to speak up I'm wearing a towel.

lofaszvanitt

7 months ago

Maybe it's time to start a movement, that educates people to ditch the control/oppressive device from their back pockets and be satisfied with a more modest but open system in every respect. All the top tier phones look and feel the same. Everything is locked down, you can't customize anything, everything needs a payment. Ridiculous.