Why Apple automatically catalogues the bra photos on your iPhone

Apple bra photos folder 
Apple's iOS Photos app automatically catalogues photos of bras and other objects  Credit: Reuters 

iPhone users have expressed their surprise over a little-known feature that automatically catalogues photos of bras on some Apple devices.

Twitter user @ellieeewbu discovered the feature when she typed “brassiere” into the Photos app search bar of her iPhone.

“Attention all girls! Go to your photos and type in brassiere. Why are Apple saving these and made it a folder!?” she wrote.

User @Sophoejade98_ also tweeted: “Typing brassiere into you photo album search bar and seeing what photos Apple have saved in that file freaks me out a bit.”

“How do we keep this from happening? I feel really really violated,” asked another.

Others tweeted they were alarmed about the feature displaying intimate images of themselves, however Apple isn’t actually saving the photos in a specific folder, they are only being stored locally on the device.

The feature was actually introduced with the launch of i0S 10 last year, however it seems many iPhone users were unaware it even existed, with @ellieeewbu’s tweet being shared and liked by almost 30,000 others.

It makes searching for specific photos a lot easier, with Apple using facial recognition and machine learning technology to work out the objects in your images.

Developer Kenny Yin has published a comprehensive list on Medium of the thousands of different scenes and objects the Photos app can recognise, with “corset” and “girdle” also listed as searchable words - as well as animals like cats and dogs.

The Verge notes that while “bra”, “bras” and “brassiere” appear in the list, men’s briefs or boxers do not.

Apple explains on its website that “your photos are yours and yours alone”.

“One of the best things about Photos is how it protects your privacy,” say Apple.

“iOS is designed to take advantage of the powerful processor built into every iPhone and iPad.

“So when you search your photos, for instance, all the face recognition and scene and object detection are done completely on your device.”

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