If you’ve opted in to use face recognition or thumbprint technology to unlock your phone, you’re using AI. Apple’s FaceID “learns” your face through multiple angles, and then creates a detailed map of your unique features. Once that information is stored, your phone uses it to verify your identity each time you try to unlock it. However, there’s more to it than matching two similar images because lighting, makeup, and environmental factors can show AI something slightly different than it learned. So, AI allows biometric systems like FaceID to filter out irrelevant changes and focus on what’s important, adapting in real-time to these variables (Killham, 2024).

When it comes to digital photography, we’re all familiar with those fun, silly, or sometimes scary AI filters that can be found in Snapchat and other apps. However, AI is also used in editing photos. For instance, if you have an iPhone with iOS 16 or later, you can use the Photo Cutout feature in the Photos app to cut subjects out and copy and paste them into text messages or create stickers. These features work by "training" AI processors to recognize and differentiate between the foreground and background, thanks to analyzing thousands of sample images. This type of advanced editing tool was once only found in photo editing software, but AI has made it possible for the masses (Killham, 2024).

I can't even remember life before autocorrect. As AI has become more refined over the years, so has the ability for our systems to recognize misspellings in many languages. Autocorrect and autocomplete analyze text samples, particularly the ones you type, to predict the words you're likely to use next. For instance, after the phrase "You are," the system might suggest "beautiful," but based on previous writing habits, it could just as easily predict "the best," or even "dumb” (Killham, 2024).