Do you like Apple? Perhaps you like everything Artificial Intelligence-related? Maybe you can imagine detecting how you feel? Perhaps the future might hold just that, with multinational technology company Apple Inc.’s recent purchase of Emotient, a San Diego based Start-up Company that uses AI technology to read and evaluate people’s emotions based on facial expressions.
Originally reported by the Wall Street Journal one week into January, Apple certainly took a step into the future with yet another acquisition of a start-up company. Fairly known for its history of buying and acquiring augmented reality and machine learning companies, this isn’t all too knew for the tech giant. Having purchased companies such as VocallQ, Meraio, Perceptio, and Faceshift in 2015, Emotient is probably just the first in its lineup of acquisitions in 2016.
So what’s so special about Emotient and Apple’s recent purchase? According to Apple’s all too generic statement of “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans” (as reported by the Wall Street Journal), we can’t really say at this point. History shows however that Apple often leads the technology to be used in completely different applications than what was often intended by the original company.
According to Emotient’s website www.emotient.com, it is a leader in emotion detection and sentiment analysis based on facial expressions. The company also claims to be at the vanguard of a new era of “emotion-aware computing”. Boasting its technology’s potential application in advertising and marketing fields, reading a customer or client’s emotional response to ads, and products. In previous years, Emotient has also made suggestions in the technologies’ possible use in automotive GPS systems, giving the driver new route options if it detects frustration due to traffic or inconveniences in the current route. There have also been suggestions of the technologies’ potential in the fields of teaching and education, and possible application in medical diagnosis.
Prior to acquisition, the start-up had a mere 50 employees (as stated on its LinkedIn profile), but has raised over $8 million from various investors, one of them being Intel Capital. In 2014, the company launched a private beta for a Google Glass app that informed the user of a person’s overall emotion by scanning the person’s face for various emotional cues.
Apple’s intentions with Emotient’s technology remains largely unknown, but certainly sounds complementary to its previous purchases of start-ups in the field of recognition technology such as Faceshift and Perceptio. Only time will tell what Apple has in store for the world; maybe that next iOS update will turn Siri into the person who knows you best.
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