According to Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac, Apple has added face detection API in iOS 5. Apple had previously used face detection on the Mac for everything from iPhoto's Faces feature to OS X Lion's advanced PhotoBooth effects, and along the way bought the company behind it, Polar Rose.

We have taken a look at these iOS 5-exclusive APIs and they are highly sophisticated. The first, called CIFaceFeature, can determine through an image where a person’s mouth and eyes are located. The second API, CIDetector, is a resource within the operating system that processes images for face detection.

So while we might see the built in iOS PhotoBooth get the same feature boost as Lion, we could also see other novelty apps, and games, and perhaps one day facial recognition for security. ("Oh, hi Steve. Unlocking your passwords now.")

[9to5Mac]

Ever wanted to unlock your iPhone simply by having it look at you and recognize who you are? A jailbreak mod called RecognizeMe will be hitting Cydia soon and promises to bring biometric facial recognition security to the iPhone 4. The mod will allow you to unlock your iPhone by scanning your facial features with the front-facing camera and verifying who you are before giving you access.

The tweak offers settings for dialing up the level of security (facial matching), which we're assuming requires a bit more processing time, but the app definitely appears to deliver on its promise of facial recognition security for the iPhone 4. The mod looks a little slow at the moment, but hopefully the developers are able to optimize the code before an official release.

Check out the video after the jump, and let us know what you think in the comments!

[Thanks @adamelter]

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent submitted by Apple today that indicates the use of a facial recognition camera as well as a new speaker array for use with the iPad. The patent shows off three and four speaker arrays to help give off better audio at increased ranges. Also indicated in this patent is a camera that will include facial and location orientation. This will allow the camera to reorient itself depending on if you are chatting with it in landscape or portrait mode. Stay with us to find out what else Apple has patents on.

The patent goes on to explain that the orientation sensor may be provided by a compass, accelerometer, an inertial sensor, or other device. It would be provided by the selection of the orientation of the display, the shape of the touch input or image recognition of the listener.

The speaker array is simply a different arrangement for the use of three or four speakers placed around the device in a non-collinear arrangement. This would allow for the iPad's audio range to cover high range tweeter and a lower range speaker.

Also an interesting note in this patent appears to be a new iPad stand that utilizes a magnetic type backing to hold the iPad. It is unclear whether we will ever see this stand but it is interesting to see that Apple could be working on it nonetheless.

[ Patently Apple ]

No, not unlocking the iPhone from AT&T (JAR!), unlocking the iPhone so you can use it. Slide to unlock, passcode unlock, that kind of unlock. Okay, now if you're still reading, Apple Insider has found some patent filings that suggest Apple is exploring things like biometrics (i.e. it reads your fingerprint while you slide to unlock), facial recognition (i.e. uses the camera to analyze who you are/might be) and pattern matching (i.e. choose unique shape combinations as a passcode). But it doesn't stop there:

Apple goes so far as to suggest the possibility of recognizing the user's distinctive voice or even collecting DNA samples to recognize a user's genetic sequence. Biometrics could also be context-sensitive and detect the shape of a user's ear before allowing a call to go through, for example.

Of course, many, many Apple iPhone patents have yet to see the light of day, so there's no telling when, if ever, this functionality will be built into future iPhones. Still, it's always nice to Apple is working on possibilities for those future iPhones.

But we have to admit, some of this is just so sci-fi we kinda want to see if they can really do it...