Rumors from 9to5Mac make it look like Apple has bought all of the shares of Polar Rose, a facial-recognition company based out of Sweden. And while this is still an unconfirmed acquisition, Polar Rose officially closed its free face-tagging service earlier this month.
So, this begs the question, is Apple buying the technology outright, or using it to upgrade their existing capabilities?
Now, facial recognition technology may sound futuristic, but you’re already using it in everyday life. Your camera probably auto-adjusts its light to faces. Whenever you tag a friend in a Facebook photo, it knows exactly where the person’s head is.
Arctic Rose offers three different products that utilize this technology, two of which (Face Cloud and FaceLib) seems to make sense for Apple’s world. But, what will Apple’s next-step be? Face technology to auto identify people for simple photo tagging and other social networking niceties.
Or a security feature that will auto-lock your Apple devices without your face’s permission?