FaceTime in iOS 26 will freeze your call if someone starts undressing | Hacker News Reader

FaceTime in iOS 26 will freeze your call if someone starts undressing

9to5mac.com

45 pointsgreenie_beans39 comments

> In other words, everything happens on-device so Apple has no idea about the contents of your call.

Of course. And we have to trust that it is true and won't change depending on country and/or target.

Don't know why this is downvoted. It's pretty difficult to even get a hold of the binary artifacts, much less the source, to verify.

For all you know they could very well be sending back embeddings or have it trigger recording.

just dont grant internet access to face time and then you can be sure they arent uploading any recordings to their own servers

lol It's been a while but I was under the impression Face Time was a VOIP app. That's a little useless without internet.

Naah. It works. You must be holding it wrong. Apple things have a special way to function. Sometimes you might feel something is broken but actually it’s you doing it wrong because that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Off course it works, you just need to enable telepathy in your brain settings interface

<whoosh>

Apple can just send the video somewhere without this feature existing.

But now we know they have the technology to easily extract the most interesting parts, and have to trust they won't use it for their advantage.

That's so creepy. The machine shouldn't care.

I mean it should to an extent, especially if a young person is using the device.

Jefferey Toobin would have loved this feature during COVID.

That's like a third of the value proposition for FaceTiming with an S/O.

What about FaceTiming with grandma?

I'm sure grandma knows how to undress, otherwise she wouldn't be a grandma?

I'm guessing this feature is intended to prevent two scenarios: A) Grandma accidentally undressing during a FaceTime call (for instance, she forgot to hang up and the call kept recording); and B) Grandma getting on a call with a stranger who wanted to shock her by exposing themselves.

At least, that's what the child protection feature† in current versions of iOS is supposed to do.

† Which this feature clearly evolved from, and the article suggests that it might be a bug that has enabled this for adults as well.

As part of Apple One subscription you can select upto three contacts in the nudity exception list.

You know, I'd really rather not have an AI model trained on detecting people stripping naked on any of my webcam-enabled devices.

So... use Signal or Telegram?

Will that delete the model? Can my consent be used to stop this functionality from being downloaded, besides buying a new phone?

Yeah makes you wonder how they are training these kinds of models... And who is doing that work.

Like the social media moderators who get exposed to mountains of horrifying content.

Jin Yang had to pivot from his Hotdog app.

I feel this is a situation where half the world is unaware of a specific problem.

And the other half probably doesn't tell them.

Is the problem in question consent over how my phone works?

We're fast approaching the "yes it's bad for privacy but think of the kids" threshold between this and client-side scanning. Both can be used as instruments of blackmail from a sufficiently motivated threat actor.

At most I could accept if this were a feature for children’s accounts that parents could choose to enable. I’m not sure I’m Ok with even that though because slippery slopes quite often start with “ think of the children”.

Audio/Video/Chat services should probably be demanded(maybe even required by law) to be dumb pipes that never filter ANYTHING.

No one cares about the children/elderly/disabled/etc until they want to argue over something

It says in the article that this is exactly what it is.

Can we have a European version, that freezes if someone shows violence? Nobody cares about nudity.

This was my first thought too. US culture is weirdly prudish about nudity. I guess it comes from their flavour of Christianity? That’s fine of course, but they foist this on the whole world. ;(

Which is weird when you consider an entire book of the Bible is a poem extolling the qualities and virtues of King Solomon's... er... "royal staff."

Fundamentalism from a backlash to English Anglicism historically.

They care so much they are banning clothing:

https://metro.co.uk/2025/03/10/this-european-beach-enforcing...

Aha

Or if it detects a Trump image / video, anywhere on screen

- i'd love if a Trump image or video was replaced by a talking hamburger that simply said "Rabble rabble rabble"

Search for "Make America Kittens Again" for the browser extension.

There goes my part time job.

So, .. no application for it in the remote consult medical domain then.

Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?

Uh huh, you'll have to speak up I'm wearing a towel.

Maybe it's time to start a movement, that educates people to ditch the control/oppressive device from their back pockets and be satisfied with a more modest but open system in every respect. All the top tier phones look and feel the same. Everything is locked down, you can't customize anything, everything needs a payment. Ridiculous.

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