Controversial Camera Function: a Violation of Privacy?

The camera features of smartphones have become more and more important to consumers, so many companies are competing for pixels, colors, light sensitivity, etc. Recently, smart phone company “OnePlus” was revealed to have perspective function on one of its new series of phones, OnePlus 8 Pro. This perspective effect is from the filter named “autumn”—when this filter is used, the camera can see through plastics and cloths, which makes many people concerned about their privacy and safety.

According to photos provided by a Twitter user, after the filter is turned on, it can penetrate a black T-shirt, and the paper put inside the shirt can be seen obviously. Twitter user Ben Geskin also provided video evidence of how the inside of Apple TV box can be seen under the filter of “autumn”.

After the exposure of this incident, netizens’ attitudes are mainly divided into four categories: “This feature shouldn’t exist”, “I don’t think this is real”, “Technology is innocent, it would be the user’s problem if anything bad happens”, and a small portion of people are having immoral ideas on using this function.

At the same time, many OnePlus 8 Pro users seem to like the filter “autumn” and have taken many beautiful scenery photos by utilizing this function, so OnePlus tried adopting a new technical scheme to put this filter back on after putting an end to the concerns.

On May 14, a OnePlus employee responded to netizens’ doubts on the perspective function of the filter on MicroBlog. He explained that this camera is a special filter camera, which provides many different filters including infrared photography functions. Infrared photography has always existed. It is a lesser-known but very old and established technique used in the field of photography.  There are even special annual photography events for infrared photography, and almost all e-commerce platforms sell infrared photography equipment.

Moreover, the employee emphasized that this filter is certainly not as terrifying as some people say, and it doesn’t have the ability to do harmful things either. Secondly, they sincerely don’t want a good function of expanding the photographic experience to be connected with those immoral behaviors. It is also worth mentioning that in the introduction of OnePlus 8 Pro on its official website, “filter lenses” are specifically introduces as one of the highlights of OnePlus 8 pro. “It not only makes photography more interesting, but also contains multiple filters to allow users to discover different beauty of life”.

At 2:15 a.m. on May 19, OnePlus published an official announcement on MicroBlog: “When planning the filters of OnePlus 8 pro, we hope to use this lens to sense infrared light and provide users with a unique photographic effect. But recently, according to the feedback from users, we found that under very specific environmental conditions, the filter lens may have a slight perspective effect on special materials at a very short distance.”

In order to eliminate the impact on the user’s privacy in possible extreme situations and address everyone’s concerns, OnePlus decided to temporarily disable the filter through a software upgrade and promised to complete the rectification of the filter within one week.

Now that the function has been rectified and it has reminded many electronics companies to be aware and careful with the use of infrared technology on cameras.