Microsoft launched an iPhone selfie app to intelligently enhance your self-portraits
Microsoft made a selfie app for the iPhone — Microsoft's newest app for iOS isn't a piece of productivity software. No, it's a selfie app. Unambiguously called Microsoft Selfie …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's selfie app is the latest step in a deliberate consumer-iOS push that began well before this launch — the company had already built up a long list of apps for iOS as proof of its commitment to the platform, and it now applies that strategy beyond productivity software to the camera roll.
It also lands in a contested corner of the market: Facebook had just bought the popular selfie-filter app Masquerade to fold its technology into its own products (the Masquerade acquisition), so Microsoft is entering a category where larger rivals are already consolidating — and the same research would soon reappear when Microsoft Pix brought AI photo enhancement to the iPhone camera months later.
First-order effects
- iPhone users get a free Microsoft-branded camera app that uses machine intelligence to enhance self-portraits, extending the company's iOS footprint past Office-style utilities.
- Microsoft puts itself in direct competition with Facebook's freshly acquired Masquerade technology in the selfie-app space, on Apple's home turf rather than its own Windows platform.
Second-order effects
- The selfie app functions as a proving ground for Microsoft's computer-vision work on iOS, setting up the fuller-featured Pix camera app that followed within six months and the caption-suggesting Sprinkles editor after that.
- Rivals like Facebook respond by absorbing standalone selfie apps into their own platforms rather than competing app-for-app, shifting the contest toward who controls the underlying enhancement technology.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft treats the App Store as a distribution channel for its AI research — a pipeline that years later shows up again when SwiftKey gained AI-powered editing and Snapchat camera lenses — meaning consumer AI reaches users through third-party platforms first, independent of any Microsoft operating system.
- For Apple, a wave of AI-enhanced camera apps from Google-class competitors raises the bar for what counts as default camera quality, pressuring native camera software to match app-layer enhancements.
The trend: Microsoft is turning its AI research into a stream of consumer iOS apps — selfie tools first, then full cameras and keyboards — making third-party app stores, not Windows, the front line of its consumer-AI strategy.