(Cupertino, California) Acknowledging a new world order due to the pandemic where society will never return to normal, Apple announced that the next generation iPhone – the iPhone 12 – will feature genitalia recognition to unlock the screen, rather than the facial recognition used up until now. We interviewed the team at Apple responsible for this evolution at their new ring-shaped headquarters in Cupertino California.
Sabih Khan, Apple Senior Vice President of Operations, explained the need for the change. “COVID-19 will be around for a long time. As the world tries to return to normal, the wearing of face masks will be mandatory. This makes the facial recognition system for unlocking our phones unusable. With the release of the new iPhone scheduled for late this fall, we simply could not risk putting out a product that would lead to frustration and failure in this brave new world. Facial recognition is out, at least for the year the 12 will be used, before being replaced by the 13. Thus, we had to come up with another system, and genitals spoke to us and provided the answer.”
John Giannandrea, Apple’s Vice President of Machine Learning, discussed the process and challenges of teaching the phone to recognize the naughty bits. “First, we had to research to make sure that no two genitalia were alike. This was relatively easy, since most of the major adult sites such as PornHub had free memberships due to in-home isolation requirements. The public’s need to rub one out really cut our development time in half!” He paused, then nervously continued, “It did get a bit uncomfortable when we considered the excessive use of smartphones by teens, but we were able to get through that, and even we were surprised at the amount of material out there on sites like ‘YOLO Selfie’.”
Mr. Giannandrea continued, “Then we had to consider the various angles that the camera would capture, different lighting, and even reflections from bright objects due to people having a Prince Albert or Albertina. Luckily for us, the issue of pubic hair was not really a problem. Our recognition software already accounted for things like haircuts, and over half of the tens of thousands of images we used to train the software had no pubes at all. Thank you, Brazil!”
Another John, Johnny Srouji (SVP of ‘Hard’ware Technologies) added, “When it came to men, we did have to make some hard choices. It was difficult at first to sort out what stage of, shall I use the term ‘anticipation’, we would allow the phone to recognize, but we rose to the challenge.” Excitedly, he continued, “The most obvious and most-used recognition state was what we dubbed the ‘I’ve been married to the old bag for over twenty years’, or shortened to simply ‘my wife’. The next stage that we taught the software was the ‘peaking down the blouse of your boss’s teenage daughter at the company picnic’, which we shortened to ‘George looks at cleavage’, and is actually more common than one might think. We tried working with the final stage, the ‘Miley Cyrus just turned 18’ but decided that the need for that in public settings was just so infrequent.”
Lastly joining the conversation was Apple’s VP of Marketing, Tor Myhren, who talked about the rollout strategy. “Given how genitalia recognition is a new process, we needed a spokesperson who could accurately demonstrate how to unlock the phone with the software. We brought in former US Congressman Anthony Weiner to help produce the self-help videos, as he was once not only an expert at accurately pointing a phone at the frank and beans but has some background in the teen aspect as well. Others in the company thought we were nuts to approach him after all these years, but we had the stones to make the call. Anthony was thrilled and vowed to grab the role and bust it wide open.”
Look for the new iPhone and unzip its revolutionary software recognition later this year. While you await its arrival, you can practice the recognition technique with your friends and family, and of course post your successes to the numerous sites on the Internet that crave such content. Just be discreet and careful, no one wants a visit from Chris Hansen.
