If you are an Apple fan like we are, you may have watched their World-Wide Developer Conference today. A new safety feature for the iPhone at this year’s WWDC event that is coming to iOS 17 (1) that wasn’t mentioned in today’s event – something called “Sensitive Content Warning”. This new function appears to be a compromise to their announcement in 2021, where Apple was going to implement technology that would scan pictures looking for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), but then shelved the technology given they took heavy criticism from privacy advocacy groups. (2)
This new feature focuses on tackling the problem of receiving inappropriate intimate photos or videos (commonly known as nudes). When you receive such a photo, a message will appear asking if you’d like to view this sensitive content. This feature can be particularly useful in situations where you unexpectedly receive an intimate image without your consent. In that case, you will see the following pop-up message:
The pop-up message explains that “naked photos and videos show private body parts that are normally covered by underwear or bathing suits” and “It’s not your fault, but it can potentially be used to hurt you” and “the person in this might want it seen – it could have been shared without permission.
When this feature is active, users will have three options. #1 – click “Not Now”, #2 – click “ways to get help.” and #3 – click “I’m sure” to view the picture.
Apple hasn’t revealed if this feature will be turned on by default or if it can be disabled, but usually, safety tools like this can be easily turned on or off according to your preferences. Let’s hope that this function can be locked down in the parental controls of the iPhone so that once turned on by the parent it can’t be turned off by the youth.
It’s important to note that, just like other safety features on the iPhone, the process of detecting sensitive content is reported by Apple to all happen on your own device. This means that Apple is not accessing your private images if you happen to send someone a consensual nude photo – your privacy is protected. It is not clear how this happens yet, but we are sure it has something to do with the machine learning technology that they were going to release in 2021 that is embedded in the phone.
Some Thoughts:
- We think this is a good option for pre-teens and younger teens who may own or have access to an Apple phone or iPad. However, we still believe that these two devices were designed for adults and not youth and are just too powerful for pre-teens and younger teens to possess. We advocate for providing these age groups with a “minimalist” phone like the WisePhone (3) instead of a fusion device like an iPhone.
- It will be interesting to see if for older teens this message becomes more of an enticement rather than a deterrent. Having said this, if a teen in Canada still clicks on the image, when they were clearly notified by Apple that it may contain a non-consensually shared image of another person, then they do place themselves in greater legal jeopardy here in Canada. In other words, they can no longer say I didn’t mean to look at the image because there was a warning, and they had to intentionally click “I’m sure” to look at it.
Digital Food For Thought
The White Hatter
References:
1/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-photo-scanning-csam-communication-safety-messages/
