So, why are we mad about this? The techniques used maintain perfect privacy throughought the process. It's a neat feature with no downsides for the user.
Not everyone wants the software/OSes we run to automatically send data elsewhere. I bought the damn device, I own it, yet somehow it/the company decides that some things it comes across on it, can be sent to the company?
No thank you, I prefer consensual computing.
> with no downsides for the user
No downsides for you, with your requirements/use cases. If the user has a requirement of "Doesn't send anything to anyone without consent", then this is obviously a downside.
I personally find it offensive when a mega-corp makes the assumption that my connection to the Internet is available for them to build for-profit services without giving me sufficient agency.
The cant-disable-Wifi-safely dark pattern is bad enough. But turning me into a data harvester for their million-dollar services, without even thinking about giving me a cut?
No thanks.
Alas, these anti-patterns have become a norm by way of ignorance, and its not getting better.
You asked "If not [for training data], then why the default opt-in?" and I gave three alternative reasons.
a) Compensating for missing location metadata is a valid feature for a photo library. Peer competitor Google Photos also implements location estimation from landmarks.
b) The sizes of contemporary general vision models and the size of the vector database for matching potentially millions of landmarks suggest that this is not suitable for running on-device.
c) Apple's entire strategy is to do cloud computation without private data, so it stands to reason that they believe they're not using private data.
It’s one thing to argue that Apple is doing this for nefarious reasons, but to suggest that this is somehow the only conceivable option is a bit nuts.
Apple-scale companies have done far worse. It is hardly a "conspiracy" to allege Apple behaves like other companies of its ilk.
>It couldn’t just be that they think most people will want the feature?
Apple doesn't care what the end user thinks. "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them" -Steve Jobs
>only conceivable option is a bit nuts.
I am merely suggesting it as the most likely option, not the only option.
The point is that outrage isn't automatic. Not everyone is going to be equally mad about a check box.