About 10 hours ago Reports are popping up that Apple has purchased the Swedish company Polar Rose, which specializes in face recognition technology and software. It’s too soon to say what Apple will use Polar Rose’s tech for, but mobile face recognition applications are a strong possibility.
Polar Rose recently shut down its consumer face-tagging service, and now it appears that the decision was made because of the acquisition by Apple.
The video we’ve embedded below demonstrates an augmented reality (AR) app called Recognizr with the tech Augmented ID, which Polar Rose co-developed. It allows you to point your handset’s camera at a friend and quickly see links to his or her social networking profiles and updates. The tech recognizes his or her face and surrounds it with icons linking to relevant information.
Apple already uses face recognition to tag photos in iPhoto, but this acquisition could mean it plans to use face recognition for new things. Because of Polar Rose’s successes with mobile technology, native iPhoneapps and features are as good a guess as any, but there are other possibilities. Polar Rose also works on server-side technology, so it could be a feature for MobileMe.
It’s a guessing game right now. The acquisition hasn’t even been formally announced; it has just been scooped by Norwegian and Swedish news outlets. We have reached out to Apple and Polar Rose for comment and will update this post with further information.
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