Microsoft Pix captures better pictures of people, and now whiteboards too

From the outset, Microsoft Pix has used artificial intelligence to help people more easily capture better pictures of family and friends with an iPhone. Now, you can use the smartphone camera app to take better pictures of documents, whiteboards and business cards, too. Because, let's face it, we all use our cameras to take photos of more than just people and places. "We have data that shows people are taking a lot of whiteboard photos at work, they are doing a lot of document scanning," said Josh Weisberg, a principal program manager in the Computational Photography Group within Microsoft's research organization in Redmond, Washington. Based on the app data and customer feedback, Weisberg's team released an update on Thursday to Microsoft Pix that includes enhanced deep-learning capabilities around image understanding to address several productivity scenarios. The update is available for download via iTunes.