On Thanksgiving Day the US Patent & Trademark Office published patent applications from Apple relating to Business Chat and Face ID that uses a machine learning process to identify users accurately.

Business Chat Patent Application

Apple's Business Chat is a powerful new way for organizations to connect with customers directly from within Messages. Using Business Chat, your customers can get answers to questions, resolve issues and complete transactions on their iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. Customers can find your business and start conversations from Safari, Maps, Search and Siri.

Apple Patent Applications Today for "Business Messaging Interface"

Part One and Part Two

Apple notes in one of their patent applications that that current methods for contacting businesses such as retailers and service companies to conduct inquiries are outdated, time consuming, and inefficient. More particularly, inquiries of businesses are usually conducted via in person visits of storefront locations, by voice calls, emails, or by the submission of contact forms on web sites. The latter two options are both associated with lengthy delays in response time and do not allow for two way communication that is frequently necessary to solve problems or conduct transactions. In person visits are disruptive for customers and time consuming. As a result, the vast majority of customer service inquiries are still handled by voice calls. However, voice calls themselves can be very frustrating experiences for customers with lengthy hold times and difficult to navigate interactive voice response systems.

Apple's patent figures 10S and 10R are user interface examples covering a business chat setting up an appointment time for repairs between customer and repair shop.

Apple's invention covers teachings and methods that could better handle customer service inquiries by utilizing messaging processes and interfaces.  For example, certain types of such embodiments offer a faster and more efficient method and interface to conduct customer service inquiries of businesses.

Various embodiments may also reduce the cognitive burden on a user and produce a more efficient human-machine interface. For battery-operated computing devices, various embodiments of such methods and interfaces conserve power and increase the time between battery charges.

Similarly, certain embodiments of such methods and interfaces to conduct inquiries of businesses reduce the strain on network infrastructure over voice inquiries by reducing the bandwidth and service levels required. Additionally, certain embodiments of the methods and interfaces disclosed herein may reduce fraud and improve the security of electronic devices.

The method further includes in response to detecting the interaction with the messaging affordance, initiating a messaging session with the business entity, the messaging session being initiated in a messaging user interface.

Apple calls this Business Chat and you learn more from Apple's website on this here.

Apple Face ID Patent Application

Apple's Face ID related patent abstract: "Detection of a user paying attention to a device may be used to enable or support biometric security (e.g., facial recognition) enabled features on the device. Images captured by a camera on the device may be used to determine if the user is paying attention to the device. Facial features of the user's face in the images may be assessed to determine if the user is paying attention to the device. Facial features may be assessed through comparison of feature vectors generated from the captured image feature to a set of known feature vectors. The known feature vectors for attention may be generated using a machine learning process."

Apple's patent FIG. 2 depicts a representation of an embodiment of a camera; FIG. 3 depicts a representation of an embodiment of a processor on a device; FIG. 4 depicts a flowchart of an embodiment of an attention detection process.

Apple further notes that determining whether a user is paying attention to a device may be used to enable or support biometric security (e.g., facial recognition) enabled features on the device. For example, a device can determine whether the user is paying attention to a device before authenticating the user or enabling access to particular data (e.g., passwords, personal data) or particular systems (e.g., payment systems) to prevent unintentional access.

Attention may be determined by capturing an infrared illuminated image of the user of the device with the user's face in the captured image. Facial features of the user's face may be encoded to generate feature vectors in a feature space where the feature vectors define the user's facial features in the feature space.

A set of classifiers may then be used on the feature vectors to determine if the user is paying attention to the device or not. Determining attention may include using one or more of the classifiers to determine if the feature vectors for the captured image correlate to feature vectors that are known (e.g., have been trained) for the user paying attention to the device.

For more details one part of the Face ID project, review Apple's patent application titled "Attention Detection."