Amazon acquires image recognition oriented start-up

Late last year e-commerce giant, Amazon, added another emerging firm to its list of acquisitions, keeping this information relatively low profile until Bloomberg reported on the move this week. The company in question is Orbeus, which focuses its operations on creating artificial intelligence that is capable of determining what items and objects are present in a picture or photo. This kind of image recognition means that computers are capable of perceiving the world in a similar way to humans and could have obvious applications in terms of safe shopping online. While the takeover has not been officially confirmed, sources claim that it was completed in the autumn of 2015, according to Business Insider. And with recent reports of Amazon working towards introducing selfie-based payment authentication, imaging is clearly an area in which it holds a significant interest.