Apple has bought a startup specializing in advanced artificial intelligence and machine vision technology that could help it improve its AI in its apps and services.
Barcelona-based company Vilynx Inc was acquired earlier this year, according to Bloomberg. Vilynx has developed a technology that allows, using artificial intelligence, to analyze the images, audio and text of a video to understand what it shows. The technology uses this information to create tags, making the video searchable.
It is estimated that the purchase was formalized in exchange for $ 50 million.
Vilynx has applied this technology to software companies use for search and recommendation engines for video and other media. On its now defunct website, the company bragged about its system's ability to not only recognize objects, but also understand them.
"To recognize is to detect Michael Jordan's face," the website said. "Understanding is knowing who Michael Jordan is, the well-known NBA basketball player who played for the Chicago Bulls and attended the University of North Carolina."
Apple could apply this technology to improve Siri, its digital assistant and its search capabilities. You can also apply it to your Photos app, to search through videos in the same way you can now search for different objects in photos. other fields of application could be your TV and News recommendation engine, to offer relevant content to your users.
About 50 of the engineers and data scientists remained at Apple, including co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Elisenda Bou-Balust.
Here is a 2017 interview with Elisenda Bou-Balust in El Pais
Apple will retain Vilynx's Barcelona office to transform it into one of its AI research and development centers in Europe. It also has artificial intelligence centers in Cambridge, UK; Cork, Ireland; Munich, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland.
In 2020, Apple also bought Xnor.ai, Inductiv, and Voysis to augment its AI foundation.
