Playing a game of catch up to Google and Facebook, in the space of artificial intelligence where these two companies have gained considerable ground, both through in-house research and acquisitions, Apple recently acquired Emotient, a tiny firm that specializes in self learning algorithms that can analyze the emotional cues on the human faces.
Boosting its face recognition technology, the acquisition will help Apple offer services to retail stores hoping to identify shoppers reactions to products, to doctors who needed to identify pain in patients who couldn?t communicate and advertisers interested in better understating viewers? reactions.