Apple acquires Israeli start-up RealFace

New York, Feb 20 (IANS) In a bid to boost its prospects in the world of artificial intelligence (AI), Apple has acquired Israel-based start-up "RealFace" that develops deep learning-based face authentication technology, media reported on Monday.

"The terms of the deal are not public, but it is estimated at ‘several million dollars’. Apple would mainly be interested in the promise of the technology than pure resources," tech website engadget.com reported.

Set up in 2014 by Adi Eckhouse Barzilai and Aviv Mader, RealFace has developed a facial recognition software that offers users a smart biometric login, aiming to make passwords redundant when accessing mobile devices or PCs, the Times of Israel reported.

Last year, breaking with its tradition of keeping research topics a secret, Apple came out in the open publishing its first AI research paper that focuses on advanced image recognition.

Titled ‘Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training’, the paper describes techniques of training computer vision algorithms to recognise objects using synthetic, or computer generated, images.