Apple has acquired Barcelona-based Vilynx Inc., a startup specializing in advanced artificial intelligence and computer vision technology that may contribute to improving Apple’s AI across a broad swath of apps and services.
Vilynx developed technology that uses AI to analyze a video’s visual, audio and text content to understand what the video shows. It used that technology to create tags for the video, making it searchable.
The deal was completed for about $50 million, said the people who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak about the transaction.
Vilynx applied its technology to software that companies used for search and recommendation engines for video and other media. On its now defunct website, the startup touted the ability of its system to not only recognize items, but understand them. “Recognition is detecting Michael Jordan’s face,” the website said. “Understanding is knowing it’s Michael Jordan, the former NBA basketball player who played for the Chicago Bulls and went to the University of North Carolina.”
MacDailyNews Take: There are many uses for this, from the videos you’ve shot in Apple’s Photos app to Apple TV and, of course, future Apple smartglasses!
Self-learning technology has been operating for long time. Scientists can’t even make a flowchart as to how it operates. That’s how much intellectual independence it has. It’s a kind of perpetual spying and analysis, freedom to operate, disattached from human control. It will be able to detect your mood in your smart home and it will know your world view, your politics and, if Apple is connected to Google as it is now, that info will wind up in the NSA and in any other domestic spy agency such as Choice Point and in the Pentagon. They will know even more about your inner being and thinking then your psychiatrist or spouse. Because self-learning in general has not been proven to allow itself to be controlled by humans, I don’t like this wide-reaching experiment being foisted on my and my own.
Prove me wrong.
Your opinion is as bad as your “art.” Have you considered getting a job and contributing to society?
Here we go again.
How many millions or is it billions spent on Project Titan hiring several automotive industry experts to work for Apple with nothing to show for it going on a decade.
How many millions spent on Apple TV streaming service featuring the low price point “skinny bundle” with nothing to show for it.
How many millions spent on developing AR tech and glasses with nothing to show for it.
How many millions spent on developing smart glasses with nothing to show for it.
How many millions spent on Siri and buying other companies to
improve the first voice recognition service widely distributed and highly touted now dead last. Me too competitors figured it out in less time and eating Apple’s lunch.
How many millions were NOT SPENT on making Apple and its computers second to none in the video gaming industry.
So today the next pipe dream arrived: spending $51 million on a startup AI company, seriously?
Cook is good at hiring actors, buying or producing mini-series and movies and now the latest, bidding war for the new James Bond movie.
Cook is NOT good at Apple making the entire line of its computers the fastest and best in the world at a modest Apple tax increase of say, $100 per model to uphold their reputation and ego as “the” designer premium products brand.
Cook and team excellent at making the best smartphones and tablets in history, albeit prices arguably a bit high.
But honestly looking at the rest of their product line, not so much, some OK and others like the late to the dance me too home speaker behind in price and performance. However, the small speaker recently released planning a Christmas purchase and fingers crossed big hit.
Apple could do much better with all their name brand recognition, wealthiest bank account and world first two trillion company. They simply need a creative visionary CEO less concerned playing a world SJW and not a beancounter to carry Apple forward.
Apple owner since my Lisa…
How do you think they became a $2 trillion company? It just might have more to do with nearly a decade of Tim Cook than with your advice.
iPhone!
Cook had NOTHING to do with except nurse it for profits as caretaker CEO after Jobs passed it on in more ways than one.
Nuff said…