$32.5 billion lawsuit over Apple Photos facial recognition
Illinois residents are pursuing a $32.5 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the Photos app's facial recognition feature collects biometric data without consent in violation of state privacy law. Apple maintains that the technology runs entirely on-device and does not create biometric identifiers.
What happened
Illinois residents filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple alleging that the Photos app's facial recognition feature collects biometric data without proper consent, violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
The plaintiffs claim the app scans faces to generate unique identifiers that help organize images. A federal judge certified the class action in early June 2026, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Apple's bid to overturn that decision later the same month.
Reported impact
With an estimated 6.5 million potential class members in Illinois, total damages could reach $32.5 billion if the plaintiffs prevail. The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act imposes penalties of up to $5,000 per intentional violation.
Index analysis
The lawsuit invokes the same Illinois law that prompted a $650 million settlement with Facebook over photo-tagging practices that used face recognition.
Apple maintains that its facial recognition technology runs entirely on-device and does not qualify as collecting biometric identifiers under the statute, as the iPhone cannot identify who a person is without the user manually adding a name.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.