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Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by xp84 on Monday September 21, 2026 @08:21PM (#49795239)
These are going to be very popular for intercepting images on their way to a display. Think of the advertising possibilities. Ad attribution can be 'vastly improved' when both the ad and every step in the funnel are all spymarked and all of them are reliably reported on by virtue of their pixels hitting your screen.

First the low-end laptops and phones (and probably later, most of them) will incorporate some low-level driver that is constantly scanning for these and passing them to a helper app to phone home. I assume this is something Apple will, to their credit, refuse to do[1] but I don't think other OEMs will have any qualms based on what they already do with their TVs.

[1] (though they don't do this kind of thing out of altruism, but because their cash cow is app store rents and fat hardware margins, not third-party advertising.)

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by qurren on Monday September 21, 2026 @11:37PM (#49796535)
Apple is just Stockholm Syndrome at scale. I wouldn't trust anything they say about privacy, especially given how closed their ecosystem and hardware is.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by BlaDeKke on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:06AM (#49796995)
They lacking in the AI race is an indicator that they value privacy more then competitors.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by bigyabai on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:20AM (#49797065)
No, it's just a sign of Apple holding a decades-long grudge against Nvidia to their own detriment.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by BlaDeKke on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:36AM (#49797164)
And there are no alternatives to Nvidia?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by stymaar on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @02:28AM (#49797418)
Why do you think NVDA is the most valuable company on planet Earth?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by bigbuppo on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @03:44AM (#49797858)
Because they're engaging in Enron-esque accounting tricks but because they admit what they're doing it's not illegal?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by bigyabai on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @12:19PM (#49803749)
Nvidia's a monopoly. It's not inherently illegal to be one, but they're going to control the market until someone comes along to compete.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by zdw on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @10:40AM (#49802104)
TBH, Nvidia kinda deserves this. Between the incredibly buggy forcedeth ethernet chipset, the 2010 era laptop GPUs with insane failure rates that caused a recall across the entire industry, and various other issues, Apple (and others) have legitimate reasons to avoid working with them.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by bigyabai on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @12:16PM (#49803709)
Both of those issues are over 2 decades old. It's the equivalent of boycotting Apple for supporting IBM, you will not achieve anything since the "problem" is already fixed. I don't know how you can call that legitimate in good faith.

Apple had the opportunity to take Apple Silicon to the datacenter and become the #1 professional ARM microarchitecture in the world. It was Apple's stupid grudge that gave Nvidia everything they needed to sell thousands of their lazily-made Grace CPU.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by xp84 on Thursday September 24, 2026 @08:42PM (#49838790)
Literally nothing that happened 15 years ago could possibly be cited as a good reason for a business to make a decision today.

Like, a significant portion of the people who were involved in any screwups made in the 2000s -- especially the more senior people who should get most of the blame -- are now retired.

Make decisions based on today and on reality. Apple holding a grudge against Nvidia today, if true (as we have no proof that it factors in, of course), is downright childish.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by embedding-shape on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @04:32AM (#49798159)
So they're lacking in the FOSS department because they value privacy? They lack in the human rights department because they value... What?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by someguynamedq on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @08:36AM (#49800238)
No, it's an indicator that reinventing every technology to work with your own private software/hardware stack has costs
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by ifh-hn on Monday September 21, 2026 @08:37PM (#49795383)
I don't think you can count apple out like that. They will likely implement it themselves though. This would be in addition to their always listening AI watch and intelligence features.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by diasdevops on Monday September 21, 2026 @09:26PM (#49795734)
I’m a bit unfamiliar with current laws, but are there any rules that would prohibit companies from doing this in interest of user privacy? I know at this point privacy is long dead but there are certain things that do get called out and shut down.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by account42 on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @03:57AM (#49797936)
Yeah and then they'll have to give every affected user a free Unicorn and everyone will live happily ever after.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by SV_BubbleTime on Monday September 21, 2026 @09:21PM (#49795684)
Apple’s always on watch has a declared 15 second buffer for live audio, and a worse scenario of summarizing your conversations for later but.. they tell you about it proudly. They also tell you how they’ve managed to do it while keeping privacy focused.

It’s your choice if you believe them or not, I like Apple and I wouldn’t use that feature.

The pretending that this is the same thing, that Apple is sneaking something past you when they’re showing you that they’re trying to do it right is a bad faith argument.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by defrost on Monday September 21, 2026 @10:32PM (#49796167)
Will they surrender logs for a legal discovery request?

e.g. Johnny's accused of something white collar, did he ever make any prompts that suggest how early on he was aware of {X} and further indicate how he moved to frame it?

That's a requirement that varies by country.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by SV_BubbleTime on Monday September 21, 2026 @11:22PM (#49796462)
Have you read anything about the feature?

They’re asserting that all the audio is done on device, and the results of encrypted so they can’t access them even from the backups.

Unlike… EVERY… other tech company, it is in Apple’s interest to be privacy-focused.

Even if you just have to believe them, which you do pretty much, they’re the biggest name pushing for privacy in the world right now. They make more on selling devices than they make on ads and behaviors. It’s in their interest to not lie.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by ierukah on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:30AM (#49797124)
> It’s in their interest to not lie.

Oh, really?

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by microtonal on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:45AM (#49797210)
Read the actual privacy brief. Even though the audio transcription is done on device. For Siri recap, a condensed transcription (which mostly removes superfluous words, etc.) goes to their PCC servers. So even though their servers do not get raw audio, their servers do get transcriptions, which is nearly the same privacy-wise.

Of course, at that point it depends on how much you trust their PCC.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by account42 on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @04:01AM (#49797962)
It's their interest to be privacy focused ... to the extend that they don't let other companies have free access to their users data.

But make no mistake, Apple itself is an ad company and that sets all the incentives that matter.

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by codedokode on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @05:05AM (#49798347)
Yes? What other answer could be there?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by Pannoniae on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @07:12AM (#49799391)
"No" is also an answer. Sadly one which isn't considered by many people :)
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by ifh-hn on Monday September 21, 2026 @10:09PM (#49795986)
I'm not pretending anything, nor did I imply they were sneaking anything in. It's a bad faith argument to pretend I was doing that, which is ironic but not unexpected from an apple fan...
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by microtonal on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:40AM (#49797188)
It’s absolutely not a bad faith argument. They proudly tell you about iMessage being end-to-end encrypted. The part where it’s practically only encryption at rest, because everyone enables iCloud backups without ADP is hidden somewhere in a footnote.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by embedding-shape on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @04:33AM (#49798167)
Wonder if they proudly tell Chinese users (or visitors to China) that suddenly their data is going to a different place than usual, servers outside of Apple's control?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by kennyadam on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @06:36AM (#49799086)
Not even able to enable ADP in the UK these days :(
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by pjerem on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:41AM (#49797198)
> Apple’s always on watch has a declared 15 second buffer for live audio, and a worse scenario of summarizing your conversations for later

Even if you trust them, maybe as an user you can be ok with that. As a non-user who will talk with people wearing Apple Watches, I disagree being recorded and my conversations with the watch owner summarized.

Where do I disagree for that ?

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by totetsu on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @03:39AM (#49797817)
Where could I disagree with all my family members sending their dna to 23andme?
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by maccard on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @03:28AM (#49797738)
With the person wearing the watch. It’s no different to someone walking around with a lapel mic
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by pjerem on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @09:30AM (#49800997)
Where I live it’s forbidden so I’m pretty confident that nobody is doing it, at least unintentionally.
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by N_Lens on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @12:47AM (#49796891)
“Next we just need to mark the consumer’s retina and brain to ensure our ads truly went through”
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by EvanAnderson on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @02:13AM (#49797342)
DRM helemts - an idea whose time has come: https://web.archive.org/web/20020802214412/http://www.oreill...
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by _carbyau_ on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:25AM (#49797092)
Smart glasses could be able to tell what got through to the retina at least.

But fuck it, just brand all our brains with "SLA Industries".(fictional dystopian corporation ruling future)

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by plagiarist on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @12:30PM (#49803909)
Google is probably unironically working on remote attestation for eye implants right now
Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by DannyBee on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @08:17AM (#49800035)
Apples largest area of growth is literally services and advertising. They even make a huge deal of it in their investor calls. Have for at least the past 3 years.

I think you may have an outdated view here

Re:Spymarks, Not Watermarks by leot on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @10:38AM (#49802072)
As synthetic image fidelity gets closer and closer to indistinguishable from genuine pictures, what, exactly can one do to tell the difference absent something like SynthID?

Who, exactly, is the "[email protected]" whose only attributable contribution is FUD regarding SynthID (and what are their motives)?