Facebook Voice Recognition Acquisition Provokes Speculation

Facebook has purchased a voice recognition startup and may add it to its arsenal of technologies gathering data on its users. The acquisition, reported last month in a Wall Street Journal article by Reed Albergotti, saw the social network giant buy Wit.ai for an undisclosed amount.

The most obvious uses of Wit.ai’s technology would be for the purposes of allowing Facebook users to speak commands or to dictate messages for conversion into text. But Albergotti also speculates that Facebook might look at ways for the technology to glean valuable data on users from their speech messages. This seems especially probable, he suggests, given that Facebook already has the capability to recognize television shows and music; perhaps Wit.ai’s technology could detect ambient speech while users are logged on.

One of the co-founders of Wit.ai, Alex Lebrun, also headed VirtuOz, which was later bought out by Nuance Communications. That company is responsible for the Dragon voice recognition technology, which is set to appear in some smart cars in the near future. While voice recognition technology has been most popular in the financial services sector, it seems to be branching out as the technology advances and the Internet of Things expands. A social networking platform like Facebook would seem to have a strong interest in acquiring such technology is it seeks to integrate itself in the myriad applications associated with the IoT.

—

February 4, 2015 – by Alex Perala

Partners

FaceTec’s patented, industry-leading 3D Face Verification and Reverification software anchors digital identity, creating a chain of trust from user onboarding to ongoing authentication on all modern smart devices and webcams. FaceTec’s 3D FaceMaps™ finally make trusted, remote identity verification possible. As the only technology backed by a persistent spoof bounty program and NIST/iBeta Certified Liveness Detection, FaceTec is the global standard for 3D Liveness and Face Matching with millions of users on six continents in financial services, border security, transportation, blockchain, e-voting, social networks, online dating and more. www.facetec.com

AuthenticID provides 100% automated identity verification and fraud detection solutions that are leveraged by companies worldwide, including 2 of the top 3 U.S. Banks, 8 out the top 10 wireless providers in North America, and 2 of the 3 credit bureaus. Using proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology, these solutions help companies accurately verify the identity of their users across retail, digital and call center environments for onboarding and ongoing re-authentication events; KYC, IAM, and more. The solutions are easy to integrate and provide customers a large ROI by stopping fraud losses, increasing customer conversion at onboarding, reducing operational costs and allowing quick and cost-effective operational scalability, all while ensuring global privacy regulations are complied with. https://www.authenticid.com/

Anonybit is a privacy-focused technology platform that provides decentralized solutions for securing personal data, particularly biometric information. Rather than storing sensitive data in centralized repositories, which are vulnerable to breaches, Anonybit uses a distributed architecture that breaks data into smaller encrypted bits and stores them across a network of decentralized nodes. This approach ensures that no single entity has access to the full dataset, enhancing privacy and security, even preventing insider threats. Anonybit is used by leading banks, fintechs and other enterprises for critical biometric identity functions like deduplication and blocklist checks, step up authentication, passwordless login and account recovery https://anonybit.io/

Identity Week aims to be a significant identity industry catalyst. It’s our mission is to help accelerate the move towards a world where trusted identity solutions enable governments and commercial organisations to provide citizens, employees, customers and consumers with a multitude of opportunities to transact in a seamless, yet secure manner. All the while preventing the efforts of those intent on doing harm. https://identityweek.net/

The Biometric Digital Identity Prism is a market landscape framework designed to help influencers and decision makers understand, innovate, and implement digital identity technologies and solutions. This innovative framework for understanding and evaluating the rapidly evolving biometric digital identity marketplace is the only market model that is truly biometric-centric based on the foundational conviction that in the age of digital transformation the only true, reliable link between humans and their digital data is biometrics. https://www.the-prism-project.com

ID R&D is an innovator of biometric facial liveness, document liveness, and voice biometrics. Ranked #1 by NIST, our patented passive approach to liveness, and specialized detection of voice clones, injection attacks and deepfakes, empowers KYC and authentication systems with fast, accurate and secure biometric verification technologies. Over 140 partners in more than 70 countries are collectively processing hundreds of millions of identity checks per year. ID R&D solutions easily integrate with mobile, web, messaging, smart speakers, set-top boxes, and IoT devices. Learn more: www.idrnd.ai

Footer

Follow Us