The rise of the selfie is seemingly unstoppable and Apple has been thinking about our propensity to take snaps of our own faces for a while.
A patent, dug up by PatentYogi, outlines a plan to use facial recognition to detect who the camera is being pointed at and apply personalised settings to take account of particular features.
Effectively, you’d be able to tell your iPhone that you prefer a certain shutter speed, exposure time, sharpness, brightness or set of effects, and have those preferences applied whenever you’re grabbing a selfie or even – shock, horror – taking a picture of someone else close to you.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
The name on the patent – Ken Parulski – is interesting. He was Kodak’s Chief Scientist until June 2012, so it’s clear that this 2011 filing was one of the many purchased by Apple in a raid on the troubled camera company’s patent vault.
As is always the case with patents, just because a company holds one doesn’t mean it will turn the contents into a real feature. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this function popping up in a future version of iOS.
➤ Camera having processing customized for identified persons [USPTO via PatentYogi]
Read next: The best iOS 9 features Apple didn’t mention at WWDC
Image credit: PatentYogi
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.