Apple has announced its HomeView smart display, which can recognize up to six different people to deliver a "personalized experience" for each user.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball has shared more details on how HomeView's facial recognition feature works. According to Gruber, a user must have a "registered personal device" with Apple Intelligence support in order to be recognized by HomeView. That device must be on the home's Wi-Fi network and must have been recently unlocked.
A natural question is how facial recognition can identify users using only the Center Stage camera, when other products, such as the iPhone Duo, don't allow unlocking with the camera alone. HomeView does not have Face ID. Apple representatives said the home is reasonably presumed to be a safe space. For users to be recognized by voice or face, they must have a registered personal device that supports Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, that device must be present on the home's Wi-Fi network, and it must have been recently unlocked.
A footnote in the HomeView press release states that personal context requests require a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software with Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language. This means the Apple Watch does not count as a registered personal device for facial recognition on HomeView. HomeView is available to pre-order today for $299 and will be released on November 13.
Source: 9to5Mac · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing