Apple acquires AI start-up Emotient

Emotient's software can tell from the look on your face when you're annoyed that Siri can't understand what you're saying

Apple has acquired Emotient, an artificial intelligence start-up developing technology that is intended to read human emotions by analysing facial expressions.

San Diego, California-based Emotient was only founded in 2012 and has raised at least $8m in venture capital funding from Intel Capital and Seth Neiman, among others. It has been working on Google Glass and other wearables, although the most immediate potential use of its technology will be alongside Siri, the speech recognition assistant built into Apple's latest smartphones.

"The company is at the vanguard of a new wave of emotion analysis that will lead to a quantum leap in customer understanding and emotion-aware computing," according to the company's website.

"Emotient's cloud-based services deliver direct measurement of a customer's unfiltered emotional response to ads, content, products and customer service or sales interactions. Emotient delivers this value quickly, affordably, and at scale."

Hence, in addition to recording people's words - spoken into their phones, smart TVs or other devices - users could also have an interpretation of their facial expressions recorded too. Digital assistants offering speech recognition, so that they can respond to voice commands, typically upload users' comments to the device manufacturers' own cloud systems so that they can refine their technology.

Emotient's only current "solution" that it advertises on its web site is "Customer Insights from Direct Emotional Response", suggesting that its commercial pitch before the Apple acquisition was a model in which advertisers would pay for the insights that its software could glean - potentially via people's smartphones as they view web pages.

"Wherever there are cameras there can be video analysis of expressions, and an opportunity to learn about the customer's state of mind as they emotionally respond to marketing, product and service experiences," according to the company's pitch on its web site.

Apple, though, is reluctant to talk about its latest acquisition, beyond its usual boilerplate acknowledgement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

It is the third recent acquisition in the broad AI space by Apple. In October 2015, it acquired Perceptio for its "deep-learning" technology, while Siri is based on its takeover of UK-based VocalIQ.