Company

Today we’re excited to announce a major update to Shine, Sunshine’s photos app. Shine has evolved into an AI-powered private social network designed to make connecting easier and relationships stronger—all through the power of photos.

Since launching in March, we’ve explored how photo sharing, with a boost from AI, can bring people closer. Here’s what’s new:

• Streams, your WhatsApp for Photos.  We all share photos via messaging.  The issue is that messaging was made for chatting, not photo sharing, so the photo experience is usually less than ideal – not full resolution, too many near duplicates, no easy gallery view. To optimize for photo-based chat, Shine now has streams.  Streams are essentially group chats consisting entirely of photos.  A stream could be for your family, a group trip, a classroom, a team, a night out, a dinner party, and so on.  They are like albums, but they can be infinite.  They may span a few hours or a few years.  Streams also harness AI to organize and de-duplicate photos (finding the best one).

AI Powered

• Facial Recognition.  We’ve surveyed all the facial recognition models so you can get the benefit of the best of what is available today.  In a stream, Shine easily recognizes all the photos of a person.  Shine can even suggest who might be in the photos using the profile pictures from your contacts.  And, you can tag people and share with them in one smooth action.

• AI Curation.  Shine’s AI curation is as powerful as ever, but now it’s even more useful.  By using the power of AI, you don’t have to spend your time picking the “best” photo and remembering who to send it to. You simply drop your photos into a stream and let Shine group near-duplicates, select a key photo, and suggest, based on facial recognition, who else you may want to share with or add to the stream.  This works particularly well with “everyday” photos that may not be bound for Instagram glory, but are still something you want to share with your family or friends.  This is where AI-powered private social networking comes in.  It’s private because it’s just your family and friends. 

• Shareworthy suggestions.  In Shine’s first release, suggestions were one of the most loved features.  Shine users couldn’t get enough of them.  Since then, we’ve enhanced our AI’s understanding of shareworthy photos and now, because of contacts and facial recognition, you can share suggested photos even more easily with exactly who you want to.

Private and Social

• Request photos of yourself from friends.  Within the privacy of your contacts and the power of facial recognition, Shine finds pictures of you that your friends have shared on Shine.  Shine then suggests you request those photos from your friends.

• Private.  Social networking feeds are now filled with people you don’t even know.  Shine is focused on helping you strengthen the relationships you already have.  To do this well, Shine puts privacy at the forefront.  No photos are shared from your phone without your explicit consent.  To learn more about how Sunshine as a company and Shine as a product approach your privacy, please read our privacy pledge.

• Integrated contacts for easier sharing.  As a company, Sunshine knows a lot about contacts.  In this release of Shine, we are building off that know-how.  With your permission, we access and analyze your contacts, deduplicate them and make it easy to invite friends to join a stream.

• Easy sharing across iOS and Android users.  The new streams feature in Shine works well for many different-sized groups, however it’s particularly great for groups from approximately ten to a few hundred people.  One of the issues in groups of this size is that you will almost certainly have both iOS users and Android users.  This makes Apple Photos and Google Photos less than ideal.  Shine is adept on both platforms and makes sharing across OSes seamless.

The updated Shine photos app is a new chapter for Sunshine–and one we couldn’t be more excited about.  And, we are just getting started.  Give Shine a try–and give us feedback! Email us at feedback@sunshine.com so we can make Shine even better.