Apple acquires Emotient, predicting a groundbreaking release to be expected soon in the world of Vir
- rakeebj
- Jan 8, 2016
- 3 min read
In December 2015, Wired spoke to Andrew Moore, dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, who said that 2016 would be the year that machines learn to understand human emotion. Now right on time Apple has acquired Emotient, a startup that uses artificial intelligence that analyses your facial expressions and reads your emotions using what are called deep neural networks with vast networks of hardware and software that approximates the web of neurons in human brain. It will as well respond to how our tonal voice corresponds to a particular motion. This step of Apple clearly reckons its idea of jumping into the race of virtual reality world already set up to higher standards by giants like Google and Facebook who are currently working on similar face recognition technology and have already rolled it into their online services.
Emotient, based in San Diego was founded in 2012 and last year it raised around 6 million dollars in funding to put out a sentiment analyzing app in Google Glass. Emotient is the leading authority on facial expression recognition and analysis technologies that are enabling a future of emotion aware computing. Artificial intelligence-based analysis of human faces has been a hot topic in Silicon Valley, especially in the last couple years. Having mentioned that, it is quite transparent that Apple plans on a big leap in the coming years with this tie up although they like to keep their advancements somewhat under the table.
Over the years, perhaps due to the factor or essence called ‘the Apple mystique’, they have been able to make a notable contribution to the world of consumer electronics and personal computing. Although it is largely debatable if they're all that innovative a lot of the time, Apple just have a knack for taking what's out there, what's a little higher end or out of reach to the average user, and bringing it to the mainstream at just the right time. They have an eye for style with high tech, good user experience, stylish presentation which is actually quite rare of a combination all together at the same time. Contradicting the factors above, Apple has always been questioned for simply pricing themselves right out of the hands of potential buyers. They have been criticized over the years for restricted app functioning, non-disclosure of hardware and software information, as well as lagging behind or failing to keep up with the trending technologies available in the tech savvy market.
Hopefully the tie up with Emotient will put Apple alongside or even surpass the mighty Google, who have already tasted success in this field with their face recognition technology equipped with google glass. On the other hand, Facebook here boasts of a great progress with their more aggressive, rolling out facial-recognition software across its social network that automatically recognizes faces to make it easier to tag people in photos. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has already mentioned that he hopes to build a personal artificial-intelligence assistant that could recognize friends at the front door to let them in. This is already a major advancement in the world of virtual reality. Thus, Apple needs a groundbreaking release as of now to mark their presence in this field and acquiring Emotient, seems to be the right decision at this need of the hour.
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