BAKED INTO IOS
Up until iOS 13, a special feature on iPhones to
help users take selfies - known as “portrait mode”
- has only recognized human faces, but this year
Apple changed that. With iPhone 11, iOS users
can enter pet portrait mode, recognizing animal
features and enhancing them, utilizing the soft-
focus background feature for an impressive
finish. Indeed, images released by Apple
alongside the iPhone 11 launch demonstrate
the power of the new selfie camera, which
makes it easier for iOS users to snap adorable
pictures of their cats and dogs.
Earlier in the year, Apple also confirmed it was
working on a new piece of software called
VNAnimalDetector, which draws a digital
rectangle around any part of a photograph
containing an animal and labels it as a cat
or dog. It’s part of the company’s ongoing
efforts to take complicated and tricky machine
learning techniques, and package them as