Apple Granted Synthetic Group Selfies Patent, Allowing Users to Take Virtual Group Selfies Remotely

Apple has been granted a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office for creating synthetic group selfies that allow users to create a group selfie even when they are in different locations. This comes at a time when people have been working from home, avoiding stepping out of their homes to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Apple apparently first filed for the patent two years ago to ease the process of taking a group selfies that requires the right framing, background, and people standing in the right place.

As per a report by Patently Apple, the patent involves a computing device that can create a synthetic group selfie.

What is a synthetic group selfie?

A synthetic group selfie is a composition of individual selfies from different sources or participants that are merged together into a single group image. These individual selfies can be stored video images, live streaming images, or still images, as per the report. The computing device (most likely an iPhone) stores the generated synthetic group selfie in such a way that the participants can modify the arrangement of individual selfies within the synthetic group selfie. Simply put, each participant can rearrange the placement of people in the selfie, in case they want to bring themselves to the front, after the group selfie has been generated.

Essentially, each person will take a selfie on their phone which will then remove the background and send it to one phone to be assembled into a virtual group selfie. The patent also states that the participants can use this feature even when they are nearby or even in the same location. The phones will use AirDrop like feature to send photos to the main device.

As per a report by 9to5Mac, this patent from Apple was first filed two years ago to ease the process of taking group selfies. As of now, it is unclear if and when this feature will be rolled out.

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