Apple Explains How the Photos People Recognition Feature Has Improved in iOS 15

Apple's iOS 15 website lists "improved recognition for individuals" as one of the new Photos features, and in a machine learning blog post shared this week, Apple gave more information on what exactly that means.

Apple says that on-device machine learning improvements have led to significantly better person recognition. The iOS 15 ‌Photos‌ app is able to detect people in extreme poses, people wearing accessories, and people with occluded faces.

To do this, Apple uses a combination of face and upper body to match people whose faces are not visible. Apple's machine learning blog says that the new functionality improves the ‌Photos‌ experience by identifying people in situations where it was previously impossible.

Apple's blog post on recognizing people in photos through on-device machine learning goes into much greater detail on how Apple uses machine learning to identify people while still protecting user privacy, and it's well worth a read for those who are interested in the inner workings of ML features.