Waving to AI: Apple camera car on the road again in Germany
Apple is now roaming Germany again with cars and camera backpacks. For the first time, the recordings are to be incorporated into AI training.
Camera car for Apple Maps, seen in Cologne in June 2020.
(Image: Olaf Gedanitz/Shutterstock.com)
Please be (un)friendly: Apple's camera and measurement vehicles are now back on tour across Germany to collect new data and images for the company's map service. The company announced this on its Apple Maps page. For the first time, Apple is also granting itself the right to use the captured image data to train AI models, “including models related to image recognition, creation, and enhancement”, as the company explains.
Faces are to be made unrecognizable
“Blurred images collected in surveys from March 2025” are to be used for this purpose, according to the bumpy German translation. “Blurred” presumably means that the faces of the people photographed, and the license plates captured, are made unrecognizable before use.
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According to an overview provided by the company, the Apple vehicles have been on the road in almost all federal states since Thursday and are expected to cover the majority of districts and independent cities. At the same time, employees are also recording inner-city areas, including pedestrian zones, with camera backpacks. These recordings began in Berlin and Munich in April, with other major cities to follow. The measurements and recordings in Germany should be completed by October at the latest.
Apple's camera cars on tour again and again
The recordings were originally only included in Apple's Street View counterpart “Umsehen”. Apple's camera cars were also on tour in Germany last year for this purpose. However, older images can also be found in “Umsehen”, for example from the summer of 2020.
It remains to be seen which Apple Intelligence functions will ultimately incorporate this data set. So far, there is an AI function for removing image elements, recognizing image content and a tool for generating comic-like images. The latter in particular could urgently use improvement.
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