Apple Patent Uses Facial Recognition To Simplify Photo Sharing

Apple is connecting people through a new feature that will allow users more efficiently share information.

Take a picture with your favorite Apple device, and there might soon come a point when the people in that photo quickly receive a copy of it thanks to facial recognition.

If Apple decides to use the facial recognition system for photo distribution, it could be challenging for the company to implement cloud-based processing or store private user info, considering its pro-privacy stance. “For example, a record in a database with a facial recognition data field, a name field, and an address field can be created or updated”, writes the patent. In other words, a user would take a photo of some friends and then be automatically prompted to share the photo with the friends identified via the biometric system.

There is a third way and that way is through an automated process that relies on facial recognition. Basically through the use of facial recognition, the software will determine who is in the photo and if you have them in your contacts.

The “Systems and methods for sending digital images” patent describes various methods for streamlining the sharing of photos by linking faces to contact data, also utilizing facial recognition tech.

Apple’s patent also covers other ways in which one could pair contact data with facial recognition.

That should sound familiar to most Apple fans, as Photos for Mac already uses facial-recognition techniques to help organize one’s photos. Contact information is picked up from another app such as Contacts and associated to the faces identified in the group photo.