I know this has been asked a lot, but I am getting sick of getting contradicting information! First I hear that there is a daemon called mediaanalysisid that activates whenever you look at a photo and connects to the internet, even though apple said they wouldn’t scan photos. Then people start mocking apple users and then some people retaliate by saying that the claims are baseless and this daemon has been in mac and ios for years and is for spotlight search. After this I hear the first group claim that this is even more worrying because it shows they have been secretly doing it all this time through spotlight. And I never get a clear answer. So, do I or don’t I need to worry about this, secondly, how do we know whether our files are being uploaded or not if the OS is proprietary and the packets are encrypted? How can I check for myself to be certain?
https://xcancel.com/mysk_co/status/1617291107456454656
It’s just for analyzing the photos locally. Nothing is sent to Apple.
Per @fria’s link, this daemon doesn’t connect to the internet anymore. Also, something connects to the internet doesn’t mean that it sends (sensitive) data.
Apple’s OSes does analyze photos locally. Stated by Apple itself:
Photos uses on-device machine learning to deliver a personalized experience, organize photos and videos in ways that are meaningful to you, and power features like Sharing Suggestions, Memories, the People & Pets Album, and Featured Photos. This on-device analysis includes scene classification, people and pets identification, photo quality analysis, and audio classification. Photos also uses on-device information, such as which photos you have edited or shared to other people, people you frequently communicate with in Messages, relationships set in Contacts, Home and Work locations set in Contacts or Maps, locations where you take photos, and important dates in Calendar and Contacts.
Photos additionally uses on-device analysis to recognize the faces of people in photos, and groups them together in the People & Pets Album. When you add a name to a person in the People & Pets Album, their name and face will appear in Photos across all your iCloud-enabled devices.
Do note that this is nothing new. Ente (which is recommended by Privacy Guides) also do this:
Ente uses on-device AI to recognise faces and key elements in a photo, so you can search through your entire library using natural language search.
If you use iCloud without Advanced Data Protection, the result of the analysis, of course, is uploaded to iCloud, and Apple has the key to decrypt it. There’s no reason why Apple has to do something that covertly.
This happens on your network, so you can learn how to monitor and inspect what is sent through your network. A black box still needs something to communicate with the world around it.