Apple has offered a few different variations of Center Stage — its photo tracking and enhancement suit — over the years, but with the iPhone 17 line and iPhone Air the company has designed the feature to solve a small (albeit annoying) problem with modern smartphones. Now there’s no need to change how you hold the device to shoot portrait- or landscape-oriented selfies. It’s vintage Apple: a seemingly simply melding of hardware and software in a way few other companies excel at.
The reason it can do this is because Apple has paired a square front-facing camera sensor with its latest machine learning-assisted image recognition software. This allows the iPhone 17 and its siblings to capture high-resolution selfies and videos in any orientation.
A GIF demonstrating Center Stage in action.
(Apple)
I hope it’s also the start of a new trend toward more thoughtful and useful AI features. For years, machine learning algorithms have powered many of the most significant software advancements in our phones and tablets. For instance, Apple’s Photonic Engine technology wouldn’t be possible without machine learning. If you need a refresher, whenever you go to snap a photo with a modern iPhone, the device will capture a burst of stills before and after you press the shutter and fuse these images to reduce noise and improve sharpness.
However, as I wrote following the end of I/O 2025, sometime in the last few years machine learning and AI went from a means to an end to an end in and of themselves. With large language learning models now all the rage, most companies appear to have forgotten these technologies exist to enable new experiences (or reduce friction in existing ones). Apple, perhaps more so than any other company, has had trouble navigating this new era of tech with its usual foresight and vision, with Apple Intelligence among its most disappointing releases in recent memory. Center Stage is an example of the company remembering the best use of AI: A way to solve actual problems.
It’s too soon to tell if Apple will be able to build on its work with Center Stage to deliver other similarly useful AI features. After all, we’re still waiting on the new, more personal Siri to arrive. In the meantime, I look forward to every Android manufacturer copying Apple’s camera design. Maybe it will even inspire them to rethink their approach to AI.
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