We learned yesterday that a judge is allowing a $32B lawsuit to proceed, alleging that Apple Photos face recognition violates a state privacy law. It has been conflated with Meta’s use of face recognition, despite the two companies’ approaches falling at opposite ends of the privacy spectrum. Facebook applies face recognition to uploaded photos in order to suggest friends to tag. When you tag someone in one or more photos, Facebook will attempt to recognize that face in other photos to offer tag suggestions. Apple’s approach is totally differentThere’s just one small problem with the claim: Apple absolutely does not collect biometric data in order to carry out face recognition in the Apple Photos app.