This is by-design - The whole idea of a perceptual hash is that the more similar the two hashes are, the more similar the two images are, so I don't think it invalidates any claims.
Perceptual hashes are different to a cryptographic hash, where any change in the message would completely change the hash.
If that is the case, then the word "hash" is terribly mis-applied here.
This is already proven to be inaccurate. There are adversarial hashes and collisions possible in the system. You don’t have to be very skeptically-minded to think that this is intentional. Links to examples of this already posted in this thread.
You are banking on an ideal scenario of this technology not the reality.
EDIT: Proof on the front page on HN right now https://github.com/AsuharietYgvar/AppleNeuralHash2ONNX/issue...