Let’s be honest; we all love a good selfie. We take selfies on our own, with friends and family, to create memories, to mark a special occasion, you name it. Bearing in mind how much people love selfies, manufacturers started designing and creating their devices and software to enhance our overall experience. Google is about to raise the selfie game to a whole new level with Pixel 3 that comes with some amazing effects.
Google Pixel phones have great cameras mainly thanks to the use of artificial intelligence (AI). However, the latest development is quite fantastic, actually. The phone will have a built-in kiss cam that will be able to automatically detect when people are kissing and then take a photo. The kiss cam feature is, in fact, an update to the Photobooth mode of Pixel Camera app. The shutter-free mode takes photos automatically with the phone’s wide-range selfie cam.
Spotting kisses aren’t the only feature of Photobooth mode update. Thanks to the AI, the software will be able to identify five key facial expressions that trigger photo capture. These expressions include a smile, surprise, puffy cheeks, tongue out, and kissy or infamous duck face.
Once a user enters the Photobooth mode and hits the shutter button, the camera keeps its focus on the subjects that appear in the frame and takes photos automatically. It’s important to mention the camera takes photos when your eyes are open and face expressions good. That way you will avoid taking bad photos. Pretty neat, right? These features are particularly useful for group shots.
In the process of building the Photobooth mode, Google had to solve three main challenges:
- How to time the shutter to capture the best moment
- How to identify good content for different user groups
- How to animate visual element to help users understand what Photobooth mode sees and captures
They solved the above-mentioned obstacles by making the Photobooth rely on two distinct models in order to capture selfies. These models are a model for facial expressions and a model to detect a kiss. They worked together with photographers to identify five key facial expressions to trigger the capture. At the same time, they used specialized algorithms to detect the best time to capture the image.
Users can access Photobooth by clicking More tab in their Google Camera. Of course, it’s important to stress that these updates are optimized for the Pixel 3’s dual front-facing cameras and they look for solo, couple, or group selfies. However, some users are not satisfied that these updates will be available on Pixel 3 only, and not on other devices. Some of them commented that they don’t want to spend money on the new phone just because of updates on their Photobooth mode. But, these are still great updates that will impress Pixel 3 users for sure. We’ll have to wait until then to find out how effective these new updates really are, though.
