While looking around the files included in the Home app and related frameworks in the Beta of macOS 10.15 Catalina I found a PDF study consent form for an internal project named HomeKit Video Analysis Study. The purpose of the study to “improve the HomeKit IP camera experience” by collecting video clips from a HomeKit-supported camera in employees homes in order to “train an algorithm to detect movement and people.” Participation in the study is voluntary of course for Apple Employees. This study could have been created in order to improve the newly announced Secure Video API in iOS 13 which analyzes video on a HomePod sent from a HomeKit camera before storing it on iCloud.
