Time to bring image description sensorship back up

Yeah, when the first competitor which is Google puts their own Gemini system that doesn’t sensor things mostly, as far as I know….

I email to my window PC amd use smart picture from JAWS, it does a nice job and does not tell me it can not describe.

Like Holger, I use my laptop for image descriptions. Vision Assistant Pro is a wonderful add-on for NVDA, that works quite similar to PictureSmart for JAWS. 😉

They should just have an offline uncensored vision model for these things. Android folks can build a screen reader that can use an offline model. Oh hey lookie there's Backtalk. https://github.com/trypsynth/backtalk

Sad but if you want a good description that is what you have. In a perfect world where I rule, this is not an issue.

well, the best I can think of to get round this, is use Grock . . this AI moddal is unsensered. . one time, i asked it something, . I think it was an emoji description or something i asked it. i'll have to look through my history to find it, the free tear will suffice for most.

Hi All,
I am of the opinion that this censorious attitude stems not from a desire to do good, but rather from a desire not to be seen doing bad.
In other words, Apples censorious leanings are not designed to protect the Blind Community's sensitive ears from hearing something scandalous, but to mitigate the risk that the easily offended will hear something offensive.
Imagine the negative press, the viral tick-tocks, and lawsuits that would spawn should SIRI drop the "N-Word", mis-gender someone or describe genitals in lavish detail
Nope, from Apples standpoint, slapping an Adult Content ban on provocative image descriptions is the common sense move..
If we want things to change, then we need not only to lobby Apple but to push back on those who seek to control us through our language, who take a knee to the perpetually offended and seek to gain clout through outrage.
This means that, from time to time, some of us may have to hear words or thoughts that we do not like. Alternatively, we can learn to live with censorship.

Have a great day all.

we shouldn't even have to bring this shit up. the fact we are having to fight for this in 2026 is insane. apple needs to lern that if we payed for our devices, then chances are we are perfectly capable of mentally taking into account that what we view online may be questionible, so what? if sighted people are able to access the things we can't then how is that fare on us. it's not and apple needs to get a grip. i'm not even using IOS and im still upset, just imagine how a photographer or someone else who is blind having to deal with this.
if this happend to a sighted person, i'd bet you my almost 17 years of life that apple would back that shit down real fast. they understand that the sighted communety is a lot more laarger and is basically, their entirety of there userbase, if apple were to do this to them the amount of people that would be up in apple's faces would force them to back down.
but apple won't care in regards to us. we could all join up and they wouldn't even bat an I

I fully agree. This censorship by Apple is becoming ridiculous. Someone shared a screenshot of a conversation about racial differences. The Alt text could read it, but the image description, just refused to cooperate, in the name of the ridiculous sensitive content. I mean, if the Apple people are clever, they could put a warning, and ask you if you wanna continue with the description?
I am so fed up with their nonsense now. When scrolling through people's whatsapp statuses and you come across this nonsense, it is so annoying.

So wife sent me a photo for my 4 years old daughter wearing her new dress. Thought I can use image description to share some cute moments with the little one. VO did not allow this, referring to my request as being sensitive. How intelligent!

This makes me happy that my phones are older and will not be receiving this feature. It doesn’t seem as though I’m missing out on anything. Anything that you’re asking to describe wasn’t working properly anyway. But it’s totally ridiculous based on what the original poster were sitting here, but they were just looking for their list of songs for the rehearsal. Completely pathetic. Yes this needs to be changed for everybody. Who has these feature. Anything that people will have access to we should too completely agree.

That is nuts. List of songs! I do not see apple changing their policy unless force. This is why I check facebook on my windows PC and if I want to check a picture from someone who like my post, I can use smart picture.

Apple doesn't have to change a thing if they don't want to. We have to get off our buts and make Android a better platform for ourselves. We literally cannot make them change a thing.

If I recall your picture of your feet was flag by apple and it did not want to describe it to you. Very very bad bear. Go to the cornet of your room and do 49 I will be a good bear and behave.

I definitely wish more apps supported accessibility / rotor actions, and the AI apps at least told you when response was complete, but I'd say it's getting close. Especially if you don't need Braille.

Yes, I've been a very bad Bear... And I belong in the corner of my room. I will not behave in accordance to Apple's social construct and norms...
But there is nothing that could be considered adult content about a picture of one's lower legs. Just nothing. One picture was described, the other not.

As the subject said. Equality everywhere.

And the only time that happens, well at least images becoming blurry, is for people designated as children.

Maybe he is a kid acting as an old bear. Bad kid.

Yes, I'm in my 50s. Bad me. I had to update my clothing colors because my hair has more gray than... 4 or 5 years ago, and it didn't seem so important until a month or so ago... I don't mind the gray or the new clothing, but I do mind Apple treating me like I'm 10. I could just look in the mirror and play with my hairstyle and clothing back them, no need for Apple the prude taking down my mirror.

On the other thread I commented at least twice to explain that, while I don't endorse censorship, I can understand why Apple is doing this, because it's one thing to look at someone and make a personal and perfectly private judgment of their appearance, then having a device describe someone else for you, since at that point it's the device that judging based on the training of its models, and Apple likely wants to stay away from any kind of controversy arising from that. However yesterday I just asked VoiceOver on macOS to describe a simple triangle with linearly interpolated colors, and it refused by stating that it was sensitive content, which I imagine might be because shades of skin color might have been present anywhere along all the interpolated colors, which makes it a blanket ban on skin color that's totally unacceptable.

I still find VoiceOver's image descriptions quite useful though, as they have been allowing me to debug my computer graphics code without asking humans to describe what they see. I have also learned that Be My Eyes is available for macOS now, so I may try that as well.

as you could tell by my many comments on this, i don't think apple should do this at all, regardless of it.
if google can do it with there talkback image descriptions, **I (HAVE) (NOT) (TRIDE) (TO) SEE IF GEMINI WORKS **WITH** **CONTENT ** that may be questionible, dispite using android, but from what other people hav said images that would be blocked on apple's end are being described just fine on android

I don't know about the Android version or whatever, but I cross check AI descriptions from Seeing AI with Google Gemini. Gemini described the picture of my lower legs and feet that Apple would not. Keeping in mind that Apple, this is the old image recognition, did describe one picture that had skin color showing, with the sandals, the other was part of a costume. There's nothing adult content about someone's lower legs, so Apple has something dirty minded in it's AI models.

Sounds like the image description model has been designed to block anything perceived as fleshtones on certain shapes or patterns. As the comments above would suggest, it's causing quite a controversy since half the time people are getting flagged for "sensitive content", when they just wanna look at something as simple as an RGB scale.
Apple couldn't get their AI model working as advertise back in 2023, why should 2026 be any different? 🤷

If the content has made its way to my phone, then I want to know what it is. I shouldn't need to justify why to Apple or anyone else. Any censorship/moderation belongs in the platform where the content is situated and should apply to everyone equally. VoiceOver's job is to tell us what's on the screen and help us navigate around it, it's not to dictate what we can and can't have access to.

The temptation is always to try to justify it - like what about this particular example or that. But really, it's none of Apple's business what I am looking at.

I can see why some sort of adult content might be We We are talking about a few different things in here, though. Firstly, the censorship doesn't work properly, and secondly the freedom to use the phone as we please. For something like genuinely adult content, I guess the AI model would need to be trained on that sort of thing specifically and I could understand why that might not happen. Plus you wouldn't want it to hallucinate something pornographic that isn't there. Well, you might but it probably shouldn't do it anyway.

It is hard to describe a person in a purely objective way and people can be extremely sensitive to this kind of thingg but it doesn't seem like this a problem still needing to be solved.

I actually think the feature works quite well in the small number of cases I've used it for. But if I wanted to, for example, go back over my wedding photos and it refused to describe them then it is leaving me in the lurch.

THEY decide what we can and cannot see. Notice my punctuation for emphasis. It's the same old argument: WE know what's best for you. It's the same thing concerning the banning of use of smart glasses in restaurants. I want to read the menu, but SOME people will use the glasses to take pictures and videos of things they should not, so the BLIND person can't use the glasses' camera, either.

Smart glasses raise a number of privacy concerns that this image description feature does not. Covert filming, for example. Venues such as restaurants are not required to let you use your smart glasses if they make alternative provision, such as having someone to read menus to you. Whether we agree with this or not, discrimination law only goes as far as allowing us to have what we need, not what we want.

Now, it's quite different regarding these descriptions. I suppose what they are trying to avoid is the AI making value judgments. So 'a beautiful baby', 'an unhealthy-looking fat man' etc. I can kind of understand that but even if that is the case, then it is trumped by the idea that so many people have already expressed viz. if it's on my phone, I want to know what it is. approaching it from another angle, it actually helps in terms of flagging obscene material. suppose, say, someone sends me a sensitive picture. Let's suppose it's actually a picture containing unlawfully indecent images. To possess that picture, even innocently, could constitute criminal conduct. at the very least, it's not the kind of picture I want hanging around on my phone. describe it to me, and I can delete it, report it, whatever you like. Leave me in the dark, quite literally, and it is merely one of thousands of unidentified photos in my photo library. Think about the amount of photos people send through social media these days that, in many cases, automatically end up somewhere in your library. I would say that, even the most libertarian Applevisers have a photo or two they would probably rather not have, for decency's sake. apple is actually preventing us from identifying these pictures by dint of this misplaced paternalism; and paternalism is what it is. A commenter earlier mentioned negative headlines. Imagine the negative headlines if I were to claim, and prove, that I didn't know the porn I had innocently downloaded was porn because apple refused to describe the images to me? The most Apple could say at that point would perhaps be: well, bingo, we did tell you the images were sensitive and you ought to have known from that. Not much of a response when you consider Bingo's answer: how ought I to have known from that when you're flagging triangles, feet, song lists and pictures of infected blisters as sensitive?

Perhaps Apple did this deliberately as a means of uniting applevis users? This is the first thread I have read where everyone agrees.

Understand the apple wanted to protect kids, all of us agree but when you go to far, it does not help. Parents need to be more active on that. Apple could had gone middle of the road but they went to far. Simple, end of discussion. Bear is a bad bad bear. Keep cool all.

Soon enough, Apple will be saying humans ourselves are sensitive content. And then it will go down from there. Your phone will be as sensitive content, good luck getting in. Your house, your car your bank account. Everything is apparently sensitive content now. All loved to you all!