Facebook has confirmed the acquisition of facial recognition startup called FacioMetrics, which will help the social media company improve its video and photo capabilities.
Launched by students of Carnegie Mellon University in 2015, FacioMetrics has specialized in developing machine learning and computer vision for facial image study in mobile applications.
FacioMetrics created Intraface, an app that can recognize and detect seven different types of emotions such as disgust, anger, sadness and fear on the face of people in real-time. IntraFace is no more available on any app store.
"How people share and communicate is changing and things like masks and other effects allow people to express themselves in fun and creative ways," said a Facebook spokesperson. "We're excited to welcome the Faciometrics team who will help bring more fun effects to photos and videos and build even more engaging sharing experiences on Facebook."
Facebook's Foray In The Image Recognition Industry
The acquisition of FacioMetrics is not the company's only investment in the image recognition world. A previous Tech Times report highlighted that Facebook introduced a new deep learning software called Caffe2go, which allows people to apply Prisma-like artistic filters to live video streams.
Facebook has not revealed how it plans to benefit from the acquisition of FacioMetrics. However, Facebook focuses quite a lot on photo and video services and it is highly likely that the skills of FacioMetrics will be used for photo and video products.
Reports suggest that FacioMetrics' technology may help developers to create more realistic experiences, which means avatars may respond and like a given user.
Fernando De la Torre, the founder and CEO of FacioMetrics, wrote in a statement that the company has taken a big step by joining Facebook. De la Torre is optimistic that FacioMetric's work will now progress rapidly.
Facebook Statistics
Facebook was launched in 2004 and the numbers of subscribers are growing ever since. Facebook is one of the most-popular social networking services in the world.
According to the company statistics, Facebook had 1.18 billion daily active users on average for September 2016. The company was swift to bring a Facebook app for mobile devices and it had 1.09 billion daily active mobile users on average for September 2016.
As of September this year, the company has a total of 1.79 billion monthly active users and 1.66 billion monthly active mobile users. Facebook is an American company but it is used by people all over the world. About 85 percent of our daily active users are located outside the U.S. and Canada.
The company has made continuous improvements to its services, which has helped the company to constantly grow its user base.
Neither Facebook nor FacioMetrics have disclosed the financial terms of the deal.
