Apple’s Vision Pro is the most data-hungry gadget I’ve ever seen
Imagine you’re in a waiting room, and someone sits next to you with four iphones strapped to their forehead. You might swiftly relocate.
Yet that’s exactly what’s happening when someone straps on Apple’s new Vision Pro headset. Each of these goggles contains the rough equivalent to a head full of iphones: 2 depth sensors, 6 microphones and 12 cameras. It uses them to continuously track people and rooms in three dimensions - every hand gesture, eyeball flick and couch cushion.
Apple touts the $3,499 Vision Pro as the next big thing after the smartphone. When you wear one, you see the world around you with computer-generated images and information superimposed on top. You might be intrigued or think the idea of a face computer is dumb. Regardless, you might want to know this device collects more data than any other personal device I’ve ever seen.
If this is our potential future, then I’ve got lots of questions. At launch, Apple has taken steps to restrict some of the data collected by the Vision Pro, including what people’s eyes are looking at. That’s a very good thing. But there are also new kinds of risks Apple doesn’t appear to have addressed, or might not be able to given how the tech works.
I see a privacy mess waiting to happen. Among the new dilemmas flagged to me by privacy researchers: Who gets to access the maps these devices build of our homes and data about how we move our bodies? A Vision Pro could reveal much more than you realize.
The last time a gadget raised these sorts of societal questions was in 2013 with Google Glass. It contained a small screen and just one camera that people worried might be used to covertly record them. Glass was so reviled, the nickname for people wearing them was Glassholes. Now we have to brace for, perhaps, the Vision Bros.
Most of my Vision Pro concerns are, at this point, speculative. But it matters to all of us if the technology Apple and others are inventing to replace smartphones could end up supercharging online problems like location tracking, the loss of anonymity and data brokers gathering the intimate details of our lives.
“Should we as a society really be going headfirst into virtual reality and augmented reality in our lives before we have strong privacy legislation?” says Cooper Quintin, senior public interest technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Data brokers already have way too much intimate knowledge about everything I do. I don’t want them to have this level of knowledge.”
Adding to my concern is that Apple, which has staked its reputation on privacy, wouldn’t answer most of my questions about how the Vision Pro will tackle these problems. Nor has it, to date, allowed The Washington Post to independently test the hardware.
But from Apple’s limited statements, as well as conversations with developers making apps for the Vision Pro, I’ve been able to piece together a picture of its initial privacy strategy - and what it’s not talking about.
I’m pretty sure Apple does not want to be known for creating the ultimate surveillance machine. But to make magical things happen inside its goggles, apps need loads of information about what’s happening to the user and around them. Apple has done more than rivals like Meta to limit access to some of this data, but developers are going to keep pressing for more.
“There’s a tension between having these types of experiences and your privacy,” says Jarrett Webb, technology director at design firm Argo, who has been exploring developing for the Vision Pro. “It has to get this data to get an understanding of the world to invoke these experiences.”
And once developers have data, it’s hard to ensure they don’t also use it for purposes that might feel like a violation.
On some issues, Apple has drawn a line in the sand - at least initially. To combat people being surreptitiously filmed with the Vision Pro, there’s an indicator on the device’s front screen when it’s shooting a photo or video. Apple also isn’t allowing third-party Vision Pro apps to access the camera to capture photos and videos. That would, in theory, also prevent third-party apps from doing creepy things like running facial recognition algorithms on people while you’re looking at them.
But privacy researchers tell me photographs alone aren’t the biggest concern here. The new problem is what else the device is gathering: a map of the spaces around you. The device needs to know the contours of the world around you so it can know where to insert digital things into your line of sight.
Understanding what’s in the room around you can be even more invasiv, says Joseph Jerome, a professor at the University of Tampa and the former policy lead on sensor data at Meta’s Reality Labs.
Vision Pro apps have the ability to access this data, if a user grants permission - like how an iphone app asks for your location.
On a basic level, the Vision Pro might know it’s in a room with four walls and a 12-foot ceiling and window - so far, so good, Jerome says. But then add in that you’ve got a 75-inch television, suggesting you might have more money to spend than someone with a 42-inch set. Since the device can understand objects, it could also detect if you’ve got a crib or a wheelchair or even drug paraphernalia, he says.
Advertisers and data brokers who build profiles of consumers would salivate at the chance to get this data. Governments, too.