Photos of familiar faces

In under a week, Google^[1]
will host its Made by Google^[2]
event, during which the company will unveil its Pixel 4 and other
Pixel branded products. 

Naturally, when such exciting technological events occur, leaks
pop out of the woodwork. And there’s been no shortage of those over
the past month.

One of those leaks claims that Google has been developing a new
Google Camera feature for its Pixel 4 hardware, called ‘Frequent Faces^[3].’ 

RELATED: 7 BEST GOOGLE APPS AND
TOOLS^[4]

Photos of familiar faces

While looking around the new 7.1 version^[5]
of the Google Camera app, modder cstark27^[6] discovered this new
feature. Apparently, as you’re taking a picture of people, Frequent
Faces will automatically focus on familiar faces in the lens,
recognizing them immediately. 

Then, the camera app will save data^[7]
of the faces you regularly snap, so that the app will be able to
recognize them in the future.

Depending on who you ask, Frequent Faces could be considered a
useful tool, or a worryingly stalker-esque one.

In addition, this could ring a few privacy and security alarm
bells. That said, data^[8]
of the faces is saved locally on the owner’s device, and is only
accessible via the Google^[9]
Camera app. And, if you decide to disable the feature, all
data of the faces will be automatically deleted. 

It sounds more and more appealing. However, we’ll have to wait
until the Made by Google event to know whether or not this new
camera feature will launch alongside Google’s new
products. 

Physical objects found in the real world
lend themselves to functional design and natural progress. See if
you can spot our designers’ inspiration in the latest #madebygoogle^[10] lineup on October
15.

Set Reminder: https://t.co/3UyxgkuuID pic.twitter.com/kbPyBwwlwW^[11][12]

Made by Google^[14] will be
live-streamed via Twitter on October 15th at 10 AM ET. The company
has been teasing its Twitter followers with little insights into
their new products, whetting Google and technology fans’ appetites
the world around.