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After its new Apple Watch audio intelligence raised privacy concerns, the tech giant is facing another privacy lawsuit, this time over its popular Photos app.
If you’re an Apple user, you might have noticed that its Photos app automatically groups photos of a person into an album without requiring any input from your side. It can pull together years of photos of your kids, partner, or friends in seconds.
While this may come across as a very handy feature, it also warrants an important question: How does Apple do this? Does it scan everyone’s face in your Photos app? This is the exact question the company is now facing in a class-action lawsuit filed in Illinois.[1]
The case covers an estimated 8 million Illinois residents, could theoretically cost Apple up to $40 billion, and is set to go before a jury in April 2027. Here’s everything you should know about Apple’s Photos app and the ongoing lawsuit.
It all started in 2020, when 10 plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in East St. Louis, alleging that Apple creates and stores faceprints, which are mathematical representations of faces, for people who appear in users’ photos. The lawsuit accuses the company of doing so without obtaining written consent, as required by Illinois law.
The lawsuit invokes the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008, which is one of the strictest biometric privacy laws in the U.S. The law restricts how companies can collect and store physical identifiers such as fingerprints, face geometry, and retinal scans, and also requires notice and written consent before doing so.
The same law also requires companies holding biometric data to publish a written policy explaining how long they intend to keep that data and when they will destroy it. The lawsuit accuses Apple of failing on both counts.
The Photos app comes pre-installed on iPhones, iPads, and Macs and cannot be deleted by the user. The lawsuit says that the app uses facial recognition to automatically group pictures of the same person or pet into albums.
And it’s not just your biometric data that Apple allegedly processes. The complaint argues that the Photos app can process the faces of anyone who appears in a photo, including your friends, relatives, or co-workers, even if they have never owned an Apple device. One plaintiff’s iPhone automatically created separate albums for his wife, daughter-in-law, brother, granddaughter, and himself.
The plaintiffs also point to a 2016 Apple patent that describes facial recognition analyzing the position, size, and shape of features like the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. They argue that this is exactly the kind of face geometry scan that Illinois law regulates.
“Unlike other identifiers such as Social Security or credit card numbers, which can be changed if compromised or stolen, biometric identifiers” cannot be modified, the complaint states.
Apple’s lawyer, Arturo González of Morrison & Foerster, has argued that the company’s systems only produce a string of numbers, not measurements of facial features that could be used to reconstruct a face.
In a court filing, Apple describes a process in which the app detects both a person’s face and upper body, converts each into a set of numbers, and groups similar images together using photo details, such as when they were taken.
The company says that even when users label an album with someone’s name, the label is encrypted and unreadable to the company. Moreover, Apple doesn’t identify anyone. It only checks whether two pictures look alike without actually determining who the people in the photos are.
Apple also argues that the company cannot access the data, which is encrypted when saved to iCloud and can only be accessed by the user. Apple stresses that iCloud Photos is optional and can be turned off at any time.
However, the plaintiffs counter that Apple still controls the data, even if it cannot read it. They argue that Apple’s control over the software and servers means it can still access or alter the stored faceprints.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel has denied most of Apple’s motion for summary judgment. The judge compared Apple to a collector who owns ancient hieroglyphics: they may not be able to read them, but they can still alter, publish, or destroy them. Because Apple controls the software and servers, the judge said, it still controls the data.
The decision was issued on September 30 and made public on October 8, 2026. The case is now expected to head to a jury trial in April 2027. The jury will have to decide whether Apple’s faceprints count as scans of face geometry under Illinois’ biometric privacy law and whether they are capable of identifying an individual.
Apple could be staring down a potential penalty of nearly $40 billion, with around 8 million class members and penalties of up to $5,000 per person for intentional or reckless violations.
Apple isn’t the first company to face similar allegations. In an Illinois case, Facebook was sued over its “Tag Suggestions” feature, which scanned faces in users’ photos and offered suggestions about who the person might be, allegedly without consent. Like Apple, Facebook argued that its technology didn’t amount to a scan of face geometry, but that defense didn’t hold up in court.
In 2020, Facebook agreed to a $650 million settlement in the case, which received final approval in February 2021. The same year, the company discontinued its Tag Suggestions feature and deleted faceprints of more than one billion people.
If the current Apple case goes down the same route, it could set a precedent for how biometric and privacy laws are applied to newer technologies and could also potentially impact artificial intelligence features.
Apple’s Photos app shows how a feature designed to make everyday tasks easier can raise difficult questions about biometric privacy. Automatically grouping photos may be convenient, but the technology behind it can analyse the faces of people who have never agreed to let Apple process their biometric information.
The central issue is whether Apple’s faceprints qualify as legally protected biometric data and whether the company can be held responsible for information it says it cannot read. The outcome could help define what meaningful consent and control over biometric data look like as facial recognition and AI become more common.
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