苹果在iOS 18和macOS Sequoia中默认开启了增强视觉搜索功能，该功能旨在通过匹配照片与地标和兴趣点，帮助用户更轻松地查找特定照片。用户的主要不满并非功能本身，而是其自动激活的方式。尽管苹果声称采用了同态加密和差分隐私等技术来保护用户数据，但用户依然担忧隐私泄露，认为这是典型的企业行为。用户可以选择在设置中手动关闭此功能，但默认开启的做法引发了广泛批评。

📸 苹果的增强视觉搜索功能，会自动将用户照片与地标和兴趣点匹配，旨在方便用户查找照片。

🔒 苹果声称使用同态加密和差分隐私技术来保护用户照片数据，并强调在服务器上维护一个全局索引，以防止苹果直接访问照片内容。

⚙️ 用户可以在iPhone的设置中，通过“应用”->“照片”找到开关来关闭此功能；在Mac上，则在“照片”->“设置”->“通用”中关闭。

Users aren't particularly happy with Apple's Enhanced Visual Search opt-in.

Enhanced Visual Search is a tool Apple uses to match users' photos with landmarks and points of interest. The feature is similar to visual lookup and is intended to make it easier for users to find specific photos. It is automatically enabled on Apple Photos on iPhones using iOS 18 and Macs using macOS Sequoia.

Users appear to be concerned not with Enhanced Visual Search itself — which has been a feature for some time — but with its automatic activation.

"Opt-in by default to make sure every clueless user will never take the steps to shut it down. Typical shitty corpo movement, so common that I'll use it as a reminder to check all my privacy options in every service," one user wrote on Reddit in a post that received more than 1,600 upvotes.

According to Apple's Photos & Privacy, there are some protections for users. For instance, Apple says users' photo data is encrypted when it sees it, and the photos are matched using a "global index Apple maintains on our servers."

"We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy and use an OHTTP relay that hides IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos," Apple's Photos & Privacy reads.

"Your photo data is still encrypted when Apple is seeing it; that's what “homomorphic encryption” allows. You can perform specific tasks against a specific type of encrypted data that alters the data (in this case, gives you information about photo content) without ever having to see the photo," another Reddit user wrote on the same post. "I disagree about having it turned on automatically, but most people already use the iCloud photo search thing, and this is a better and more private way of doing that."

Users who don't want Enhanced Visual Search can turn it off by navigating to Settings, clicking Apps, and scrolling down to Photos. At the bottom of that screen, you can toggle it on and off. On a Mac, open Photos, go to Settings, and click General to find the Enhanced Visual Search toggle.

Apple did not immediately respond to Mashable's request for comment.