Apple photographs city and countryside: images for AI training in future
The Group has already incorporated web content for AI training without being asked, and now the outside world – is being captured by camera cars.
Camera car for Apple Maps, seen in Cologne in June 2020.
(Image: Olaf Gedanitz/Shutterstock.com)
Apple is expanding the data sources for training its AI models. The images captured by the company's own fleet of camera vehicles and camera backpacks will not only be incorporated into the map service, but also into the further development of the company's other products and services for the first time. This includes, for example, the training of models "in connection with image recognition, creation and improvement", as Apple recently noted on its updated information page on Apple Maps image capture.
For AI training, "blurred images collected from surveys starting in March 2025" are used, Apple explains there in the German translation. This probably refers to the images of streets and regions taken by the camera vehicles and backpacks. People and license plates are to be automatically blurred and only used in this adapted form for AI training.
Apple Intelligence with few image functions so far
For now, it remains unclear which specific functions Apple wants to improve. Apple Intelligence, which is also coming to Germany with iOS 18.4 at the beginning of April, includes functions for AI image generation, deleting unwanted photo elements and "Visual Intelligence". The latter function captures the physical environment via the iPhone camera and attempts to provide contextual information and additional actions. However, Visual Intelligence integrates ChatGPT and Google Image Search as a fallback for central image analysis functions.
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Apple's camera fleet is not currently on the road in Germany, so no image data is being collected here for AI training purposes at this time. The vehicles were last on the road across Germany in 2023 and 2024, but so far, Apple has apparently not fed the images into its Streetview counterpart "Look Around" in the map service.
AI training with unlicensed web content
Similar to the rest of the industry, Apple has also used unlicensed web content to train its language models and only communicated an opt-out option afterward. Apple's AI initiative has recently come under increasing criticism because the company has not yet been able to implement the functions promised for the Siri voice assistance system (and already marketed in commercials). Internally, the Siri team is now under new management.
(lbe)
