You can’t be with your friends in person, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want to pose for great selfies to post on social media. According to The Verge, Apple has been granted a patent for software that would generate synthetic social distance group selfies. This is a way to take group selfies for social media while trying to stay socially distant from your friends.

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Apple Social Distance Selfies

According to the patent, the software will work like a group facetime call so to speak. An Apple device user could invite others to take part in a group selfie then the software would arrange them together in a single image.

The selfie could include still photos, stored video images, or live streaming images. Users can keep the original selfie as well as the group version. The original user and recipients of the group image could modify the selfie. For instance, putting themselves in a different position in the group.

This looks like it would be a great way to take pictures with family and friends who are not around. Here’s what it would look like, according to the patent application:

Apple first filed for the patent in 2018 and it was just granted June 2nd. The software was clearly not planned for this exact pandemic but this would be a great time to get it going.

Of course, as is always the case with patents, the standard conditions apply. Unfortunately, there’s no indication when or how Apple might decide to use the software. We can’t even be too sure that synthetic group selfies will ever become a thing. Let’s wait and see.