iOS 12's Photos app says some dark photos were taken in nightclubs

And not just any nightclubs...

Apple

Xinmei Shen

Published: 6:15pm, 20 Sep 2018

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This article originally appeared on ABACUS

iOS 12 is out, and one of the new features in Apple’s latest mobile operating system is a more advanced photo tagging system. Your iPhone or iPad is supposed to automatically identify what’s in your photos, so that you’re able to easily search for pictures of, say, dogs by typing “dogs”.

Except some users in China say their iPhones are telling them that quite a lot of their photos were taken in nightclubs.

Weibo users are reporting that the new system has been identifying many pictures with dark backgrounds and colorful lighting as nightclubs, including those taken at concerts, esports events and normal evening street scenes.

The hashtag #iOS12nightclub has been trending on Weibo since yesterday, drawing more than 42 million views.

But beyond the mere mis-tagging of photos, another reason people find it so funny also has to do with the specific wording used.

The Mandarin word Apple used, “夜总会”, has a subtle difference from normal nightclubs -- it refers to a specific kind of exclusive, luxurious escort clubs, similar to these ones in Beijing that were raided by the police in 2016.

“iOS 12 seems to have some misunderstanding about nightclubs,” one user said on Weibo.

And it goes beyond photos taken at night. People have been posting other strange findings from the new iOS 12 photo search function. for example, it’s seen to have identified a child as a dog, and our chill, carefree travel frog as a “voracious bird of prey”.

We have asked Apple about the iOS 12 photos app, but have yet to receive a response.

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