Photos app automatically merging two separate people

[richie510]

I want to know if anyone else has seen this bug. Also, I did submit a bug report to apple, but I do not expect that to go anywhere...

In the photos app I have my father's person/face defined and my son's person/face defined. I connected each of them to the contact I have for each. The contacts entries only share one detail: last name.

Under this scenario, the photos app will automatically merge these two people on the photos app, and eliminate my father's person/face.

To get around this in iOS 11 I created a new person called "<fathers name> Photo" rather than connecting to the contacts entry.

Since updating to iOS 12, I reconnected my father's person/face to the contact and behind my back, it merged them again.

I found this also happened with my wife and her sister, but they are close in age and look quite similar. My father and son are separated by about 70 years.

Has anyone else seen this? Do you know if there is some artifact in some field in the contacts app that may be triggering this? I also have myself and my brother in the people album and our contacts connected. We also look quite similar, and share our last name in the contacts app, but it has never merged us behind my back.

 

[swandy]

(1) Their age difference has little to do with it as my daughters People page has photos from when she was a child onward. As soon as you add one earlier photo the app will find the rest.
(2) Did you accidentally tell the app that either your dad or your son was the other person? I did that with my wife and my grandson and I was constantly finding my grandson’s pics added to the wrong person. Had to keep telling the app that he was not in certain pics.