Apple's new Vision Pro is a privacy mess waiting to happen

Edited by: Gianna Merat

Vision Pro brings us a whole new dimension to privacy risks. Apple seems to have only a few solutions

Imagine you're in a waiting room and someone is sitting next to you with four iPhones taped to their foreheads. You will want to change positions immediately.

However, this is exactly what happens when a person wears Apple's new Vision Pro headphones. Each of these glasses has the equivalent of a head full of iPhones: two depth sensors, 6 microphones, and 12 cameras. It uses it to continuously track people and rooms in three dimensions – every hand movement, eyeball movement, and sofa cushion.

Apple is touting the Vision Pro, which arrives Friday, as the next big thing after the smartphone. When you wear it, you see the world around you through computer-generated images and information. You may be intrigued or think the idea of ​​a face computer is stupid. Aside from that, you might want to know that this device collects more data than any other personal device.

If this is our possible future, there are many questions. At launch, Apple took steps to limit some of the data Vision Pro collects, including what people's eyes see. This is very good. But there are also new types of risks that Apple either doesn't seem to have addressed or may not be able to figure out how the technology works.

It seems like a privacy mess is bound to happen. Among the new dilemmas highlighted by privacy researchers: Who has access to the maps these devices create of our homes and data about how we move our bodies? Vision Pro can reveal much more than you can imagine.

The last time a gadget raised this kind of social question was in 2013 with Google Glass. It had a small screen and only one camera that could be used to secretly record it, which made people nervous. The gadget received so much abuse that people who wore it nicknamed them Glassholes.

Most concerns about the Vision Pro are at this point just speculation. But it matters whether the technology that Apple and others are inventing to replace smartphones could end up exacerbating online problems like location tracking, loss of identity, and data brokers collecting the intimate details of our lives.

“Do we as a society really need to move toward virtual reality and augmented reality in our lives before we have strong privacy laws?” says Cooper Quentin, senior public interest technology expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Data brokers already have very deep knowledge of everything I do. I don't want them to have that level of knowledge.”

Apple, which has staked its reputation on privacy, appears unwilling to answer questions about how the Vision Pro addresses these issues, as it did not allow The Washington Post to independently test the devices, technology columnist Jeffrey A. .

But from Apple's limited statements, as well as conversations with developers building apps for Vision Pro, he's been able to piece together a picture of its initial privacy strategy, but also what it's not talking about.

Apple doesn't want to be known for creating the ultimate tracking machine. But for magical things to happen inside their glasses, apps need a lot of information about what's happening to the user and those around them. Apple has done more than competitors like Meta to restrict access to some of this data, but developers will continue to push for more.

“There's a tension between these types of experiences and your privacy,” says Garrett Webb, CTO at design firm Argo, who explored development of Vision Pro. “He has to take that data to understand the world and recall those experiences.”

Once developers have the data, it is difficult to be sure that they will not also use it for purposes that may appear to be infringing.

On some issues, Apple drew a line in the sand — at least initially. To combat people secretly filming the Vision Pro, there is an indicator on the front screen of the device when you take a photo or video. Apple also doesn't allow third-party Vision Pro apps to access the camera to take photos and videos. This, in theory, would also prevent third-party apps from doing creepy things like running facial recognition algorithms on people while they're looking at them.

But privacy researchers say the photos themselves aren't the biggest concern here. Since the days of Google Glass, we've come to terms with the idea that a smartphone can film us at any moment.

The new problem is what the device also collects: a map of the spaces around you. The device needs to know the features of the world around you so it can know where to insert digital objects into your field of vision.

Understanding what's in the room around you can be more complex than getting an image of it, says Joseph Jerome, a professor at the University of Tampa and former head of sensor data policy at Meta's Reality Labs.

Vision Pro apps can access this data if the user grants permission — such as when an iPhone app requests your location. These worldview maps may look like a wired network to a human, but they reveal a lot to a computer.

With information from The Washington Post