In recent years, a wave of photo-sharing platforms has emerged in response to Instagram’s highly polished aesthetic, offering users new ways to post candid images straight from their camera rolls. Locket introduced lockscreen sharing, Retro focused on photo journaling, and Yope is working on a private group version of Instagram.
Now, Mayank Bidawatka, who co-founded the Indian social platform Koo—which closed down last year after failed acquisition discussions—is launching a new app called PicSee. Released on Thursday for both iOS and Android, PicSee is designed to automatically identify and share photos of your friends from your camera roll, eliminating the need to use messaging apps like WhatsApp or Instagram for this purpose.
Image Credits: PicSee
According to Bidawatka, your friends likely have many photos of you that you’ve never seen—either because they forgot to share them or simply don’t remember taking them. PicSee scans your photo gallery for faces and selects images featuring your friends.
“I’ve spent years thinking about the challenges of personal photo sharing,” Bidawatka explained to TechCrunch in a phone interview. “After Koo’s closure last year, I finally had the opportunity to revisit this issue and develop a new solution.”
If your contacts are also using PicSee, you can send them a request to share photos. Once they accept, they’ll get your initial set of photos featuring them. From then on, the app will recognize new photos of them in your gallery and prompt you to share those as well.
If you don’t send the photos right away, PicSee will automatically share them after 24 hours. Before that happens, you can review and choose which images to send or withhold. All photos are kept locally in PicSee’s storage on your device, and you have the option to save them to your main device storage. Users can also retract photos after sending, which will remove them from the recipient’s PicSee app.
Image Credits: Picsee
The company emphasizes its privacy features. All facial recognition is performed on your device, and when photos are sent, the transfer is encrypted. Images remain stored on your phone, with nothing uploaded to the cloud. Bidawatka also noted that the app includes filters for NSFW content and prevents screenshots.
PicSee’s main obstacle may be its selective approach. While always-on photo sharing might appeal to close friends, family, or significant others, most users won’t want to automatically share photos with everyone they know. This could be a barrier, especially since people already use WhatsApp, iMessage, Instagram, and Snapchat to share photos with their inner circle. PicSee will need to persuade users to change their habits for a small group of contacts.
Image Credits: PicSee
Additionally, while the app can identify photos of your friends on your device, it doesn’t address situations where someone asks for a photo you took at a shared event, like a concert, wedding, or party.
The company says it plans to enhance social features. PicSee already includes a chat function, allowing people in a photo to leave comments beneath it.
Future updates will let users create and organize albums, suggest albums, remove duplicate images, and sync with Google Photos or iCloud. The team also aims to expand its face recognition technology to work with videos in your camera roll.
Billion Hearts, the company behind PicSee, secured $4 million in funding last year, with Blume Ventures leading the round and participation from General Catalyst and Athera Ventures.
