Apple Acquires Xnor.ai Making Wyze Cam Lose Its Business
Every once in a while, Apple signs off contracts with smaller tech firms which helps the company progress forward. But rarely do we come across situations where multinational corporations such as Apple acquisitions mid-tier organizations which create a direct problem for other organizations.
In recent events, something quite similar has happened where Apple acquired a company, Xnor.ai. XNOR is a firm that specializes in creating AI technology for facial recognition. The firm has been long serving this AI technology to smart home company Wyze as they included it as one of the core features in their products. However now, the smart home company has lost its unique selling point.
Earlier in November, Wyze revealed that they will soon be removing its key Person Detection feature from its security camera products. A clause addition to the Xnor sent the company wondering if it was the right decision as the clause stated that they can discontinue partnership at any point in time. But after the acquisition, the air was pretty much clear revealing the plans behind Xnor merging Apple.
The deal sign-off between the two has come as a rather harsh blow for the Wyze camera company. Xnor.ai delivered an edge-based AI-powered technology to Wyze Cam which ensured that all its recorded information stays put within the device’s own memory unit rather than getting uploaded on the cloud. Because of this particular feature, Wyze was known for its high-end security cameras.
Apple has not just shown an inclination but it has shown quite an interest in acquiring this tech.
Xnor brought forth its powerful innovative AI edge-based facial recognition algorithm to the forefront in 2017. Xnor came out into the open from the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence commonly known as AI2. It was a project governed and initiated by the latter co-founder of Microsoft Mr. Paul Allen. Its particular algorithm is what put the firm into the limelight and the company was able to raise $2.7 million during the first year of its inception and approximately $12 million in the latter year 2018.
Edge-based person recognition is a unique feature where the AI recognize objects through edge identification and extraction. It eases the uncertainty of false face recognition where Apple previously suffered a backlash on its Face ID. Two sisters who were fairly identical were able to open the same phone in an experiment even though they weren’t twins but had an age difference of 4 years in them. The existing gap in Apple’s Face ID was something creating quite the distress for the organization.
The algorithm designed by Xnor.ai isn’t just any specific type of edge-based person recognition. It is a very powerful machine learning algorithm which requires a considerably low power to run on embedded systems. It can run on any kind of device irrespective of whether it is a low-tier, mid-tier or high-tier electronic component. Xnor simply designed an algorithm that could be integrated anywhere.
As per why Xnor got Apple’s attention? It wasn’t just the fact that the algorithm can overcome the gap for Apple on its Face ID concern. The data recorded by the algorithm can stay on the device itself rather than getting transmitted somewhere else such as a cloud instance at a particular datacenter.
The company is more likely perceived to be moving in the Apple’s Seattle offices. It was reported to GeekWire that a move is certainly underway and can be expected sooner than they think. The company also concluded that Mr. Farhadi, the man behind the technology is no longer working at the firm but has relocated himself to the University of Washington as a faculty member.
Do you find this bit of information interesting? Do you think it was the right decision of Apple to acquire Xnor and sever its ties from Wyze? Will Wyze be able to search up a different alternative?
Let us know what you think in the comments below.