Recognizing People in Photos Through Private On-Device Machine Learning

Photos (on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS) is an integral way for people to browse, search, and relive life's moments with their friends and family. Photos uses a number of machine learning algorithms, running privately on-device, to help curate and organize images, Live Photos, and videos. An algorithm foundational to this goal recognizes people from their visual appearance. Photos relies on identity information in a number of ways. As shown in Figure 1A, a user can scroll up on an image, tap on the circle representing the person that has been recognized in that image, and then pivot to browse their library to see images containing that person. A user can also directly access the People Album, shown in Figure 1B, to browse images and confirm the correct person is tagged in their images.