Fake eye contact in FaceTime:
The era of digital fakery enabled by Artificial Intelligence is upon us. The Internet is awash with Jennifer Lawrence-Buscemi-type videos of celebrity figures saying and doing things they didn’t actually say or do.
Apple decided to give users a taste of this pie — FaceTime Attention Correction. It was first spotted in iOS 13.
The consumer-ready version of this feature lets you make fake eye contact while talking to people on FaceTime.
To enable this, go to Settings > FaceTime > Eye Contact and toggle it on.
Now a lot of folks are saying they’re unnerved by the idea of something so personal and intimate as video chatting falling prey to this ‘gimmick’.
But it’s actually cheaper than solving the eye-contact issue in video chatting via hardware that involves putting a camera under the display.
Most importantly, there are some of us who are not comfortable holding steady eye contact while talking to another person in real life or on video calls. Spare a thought for them, won’t you?
At the end of the day, Apple has not forced this feature upon users, but is offering it as an option.
Sound recognition if you’re working with headphones:
Sound Recognition leverages on-device intelligence to notify users about a particular type of sound or alert like a dog barking, a fire alarm, a cat meowing, a doorbell ringing and so on.
This can come in handy not just for people who are hard of hearing. It might also be needed by those who may be listening to or watching stuff on the phone with their earphones in and unable to hear ambient sounds.
To turn on this function, go to Settings > Accessibility > Sound Recognition. The Sounds section below this screen will let you choose which sounds to recognize.