Apple Acquires Regaind, a French Computer Vision Startup Focused on Photo and Facial Analysis

[MacRumors]

Apple has acquired Regaind, a small French artificial intelligence startup focused on photo and facial analysis, according to TechCrunch.

Apple essentially confirmed the deal with its standard statement:

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.

Regaind has developed a computer vision API that can extract "game-changing insights" from images, according to its website.

We help businesses and developers deal with massive flows of images by using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to analyze and sort them. Your problem is often not reduced to finding a photo of a "sailboat" or of a "lion": it's also about finding the right one for your specific use, among many others. Regaind enables you to understand the content of an image, as well as to assess its technical and aesthetical values, so as to maximize your impact with high quality photos.

Regaind is able to analyze the aesthetics, sharpness, exposure, colors, and other properties of photos, and use that information to boost or promote the most relevant ones in a meaningful way.

Regaind's computer vision API can also detect faces in a photo, as well as the gender, age, and emotion of the people that appear. It's possible that Apple is already using this technology for facial recognition features like Animoji in the iPhone X, and there could be additional implementations to follow.

Apple could use Regaind's technology to improve the Memories feature in the Photos app on iOS, for example, which already intelligently curates photos and videos based on activities, trips, holidays, people, pets, and more.

Article Link: Apple Acquires Regaind, a French Computer Vision Startup Focused on Photo and Facial Analysis

 

[The Barron]

Excellent purchase, Apple. I love the photo & especially Face ID features and look forward to even better.

 

[LordQ]

iPhone XI and iOS 12 goodies.

 

[840quadra]

With their focus being on internal machine learning, as opposed to cloud sourced solutions, it is nice to see them building their on portpholio with tools / technology to make those features better. Personally I am a big fan of local (private) machine learning, over cloud sourced AI. Privacy is only part of the reason for my opinion on this, I also like not having to use Data, and utilize the power of the devices we carry around.

 

[grayskies]

I have no knowledge of this field, but I immediately wonder the possibilities expanding the application to 3D or AR.

 

[v0lume4]

iPhone XI and iOS 12 goodies.

Thank you so much for calling it iPhone XI instead of iPhone X2, or any of the other crazy variations I've seen that fail to acknowledge that the "X" is the roman numeral for ten.

 

[mcfrazieriv]

See? The French ARE good for something, guys! Excited to see where this goes.

Can't wait for the iPhone 9 and 10.1 Mountain Lion next year. /s

 

[PeLaNo]

This could lead to improvement in search results in photo.app. It’s not that perfect right now.

 

[nuckinfutz]

sacre bleu

So much with facess

 

[GuilleA]

See? The French ARE good for something, guys! Excited to see where this goes.

Can't wait for the iPhone 9 and 10.1 Mountain Lion next year. /s

Bertrand Serlet is french.

 

[Applebot1]

Interesting acquisition. Apple defo going to expand their emoji obsession.

 

[citysnaps]

Excellent move. Loads of possibilities.

 

[velosterz]

Just checked their website, they have some examples of photos analysis.. Wow. Very impressive.

 

[macs4nw]

Just checked their website, they have some examples of photos analysis.. Wow. Very impressive.

I agree this is interesting tech. Although some of those assessments are somewhat subjective. I could not agree with some of their 'Subject well-framed' ratings, and their 'Dull colors' ratings seemed inconsistent.

This will no doubt be refined, although certain determinations will always remain in the 'subjective' realm.

 

[Nicksd84]

I wish they’d buy google maps. Lololololol

 

[trifid]

Skynet is upon us.

 

[chfilm]

This could lead to improvement in search results in photo.app. It’s not that perfect right now.

It's already crazy impressive though!

 

[PeLaNo]

It's already crazy impressive though!

I’ve got these pics from internet and there’re some of them don’t count as a . Like this dog portraits.

 

[Attirex]

NY Times posts an article about how huge, rich, monopolizing tech companies like Apple, Google, MS, etc., actually hamper technological progress because they gobble up so many small start-ups that might have otherwise created game-changing innovations...in 3...2.....1.....

GO!

 

[SeattleMoose]

Apple's obsession with "faces" is creepy. Potential for even more intrusion into our private lives. But young techies always put a "this is so great" spin while ignoring the potentials for MORE technology abuse, hacking, identity theft, etc. So many educated fools...

 

[rafark]

It's nice but a bit scary as well. This is the beginning of identity recognition by robots. Not far from now we'll get a nice female voice saying: Hello John your mother/wife/kids were last seen at the central park at 1pm and left to the north at 2.49 pm do you want me to notify you next time we see them?

 

[rizzo41999]

I’m not a huge fan of the facial jazz. But then again, I said the same thing about Touch ID so clearly I’m full of it a little bit. However, with all of these recent credit breaches, it does make me wonder how much worse future breaches will be.

 

[simx34]

Apple's obsession with "faces" is creepy. Potential for even more intrusion into our private lives. But young techies always put a "this is so great" spin while ignoring the potentials for MORE technology abuse, hacking, identity theft, etc. So many educated fools...

It's a computer vision AI, how exactly does this lead to more technology abuse? I don't understand you're point.

 

[deany]

Shame that you (apple) left many people out of a job in the UK, poaching Imagination Technologies (UK) key staff and steeling their intellectual property to further your own (new) chips.
When you could have easily bought Imagination Technologies.

We wont forget.

 

[MRrainer]

Shame that you (apple) left many people out of a job in the UK, poaching Imagination Technologies (UK) key staff and steeling their intellectual property to further your own (new) chips.
When you could have easily bought Imagination Technologies.

We wont forget.

Apple doesn't like buying up big companies. Integration would have been a nightmare. And it is in fact a big nightmare in the real world.
Besides, they already had staff doing exactly the same as Imagination Technologies - so that would have only added friction.

But yeah, I do feel sorry for the people who got thrown under the bus. That really sucks.

I think unless you (as a supplier) are doing something really specialized that will never be a core-component, Apple's relationship with you can often be pretty... abusive.

OTOH, management at Imagination Technologies must have seen this coming for a long time.