Every Mac since 2022 includes undocumented family classifier
Original title: Every Mac comes with an (undocumented) family member classifier
Apple Intelligence builds a personal knowledge graph on Macs including family relationships from device data like contacts and photos.
Apple Intelligence on Macs since 2022 uses daemons to construct a knowledge graph from contacts, calendar, photos, messages, location and other signals. The graph includes kinship inferences and is queryable by LLMs. Researchers analyzed the SQLite databases in ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform and found no official documentation beyond a man page. A dashboard was open-sourced to inspect the graph, and a privacy thought experiment demonstrated potential exploitation if the data fell into wrong hands.
- Graph built from contacts, photos, calendar, location and messages
- Includes family sharing and kinship inferences
- Databases stored in plaintext in TCC-protected zone
- Integrates with Apple Intelligence LLMs
- Researchers released iKnow dashboard
Impact: personal data exposed to LLM queries
| Product | Affected |
|---|---|
| Apple Mac | since 2022 |
- 1.Inspect knowledge graph with iKnow dashboard
- 2.Review collected data from ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform
- Vendors
- Apple
- Products
- Mac
- AI models
- Apple Intelligence
From the original article
12 min read at 8rank.ai
What if I told you that every Mac since 2022 ships a pair of daemons whose only purpose in life is to build a graph about you and the people around you: who you are, who you know, how those people are related to you and to each other, how you communicate with them, where you go, with whom, what you do and when.
By infwhispers · 8rank.ai
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