On Friday, the tech blogosphere was buzzing with reports that Apple is tinkering with a new form of facial recognition technology for use in one or more of its iDevices.
Despite years of rumors suggesting this technology was on the way, Apple is yet to roll out any such features. But this week, evidence emerged at the US Patent and Trademark Office to reveal more insight into Apple’s purported long-term plans.
According to Apple Insider, the patent application called “Low Threshold Face Recognition” illustrates how Apple could utilize a low-computation solution in iDevices for the purpose of recognizing a user via an iPad or iPhone’s front-facing camera.
The patent suggests that Apple’s technology doesn’t “aggressively analyze” a user’s face. Rather, it focuses on a “high information portion” of a human face to gauge the measurement of distance between ones eyes, mouth, nose, etc. in order to identify the iPhone or iPad user.
The software then measures the freshly-acquired data in real-time against the reference image stored on the device to determine if the iDevice owner is, indeed, the person currently accessing the device.
Would you support the implementation of facial recognition technology in future generations of iPhones and iPads? Or does that sort of creep you out just a tad?
