According to a new report from Apple Insider, the new patent builds upon current facial recognition tech, enabling users to find and sort their photos. However like we said this is a patent and there’s no telling if and when Apple will ever make it a reality. “The facial recognition data for the face may be stored in association with the name and address for the face”, Apple describes in the patent application.
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That’s more convenient than waiting for a friend to manually upload or publish photos to a social network. Basically through the use of facial recognition, the software will determine who is in the photo and if you have them in your contacts.
There is a third way and that way is through an automated process that relies on facial recognition.
Essentially, the patented system uses facial recognition technology to identify the individuals in a photo taken on a mobile device, and facilitates the sharing of that photo with the tagged individuals based on their connected contact information.
That should sound familiar to most Apple fans, as Photos for Mac already uses facial-recognition techniques to help organize one’s photos.
In Apple’s case, the new system is able to put a name to that face in a group photo and instantly suggest a relevant list of potential recipients based on the information it gathers directly from the picture.
The patent covers a variety of photo-sharing and contact-linking methods.
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The concept is highly reminiscent of Facebook’s recent Moments app, which identifies people and places in images and then allows users to easily share with friends, without having to post the pictures to Facebook to do so.
