In 2019, the Santa Fe Independent School District in Texas ran a weeklong pilot program with the facial recognition firm AnyVision in its school hallways. With more than 5,000 student photos uploaded for the test run, AnyVision called the results "impressive" and expressed excitement at the results to school administrators. "Overall, we had over 164,000 detections the last 7 days running the pilot. We were able to detect students on multiple cameras and even detected one student 1100 times!" Taylor May, then a regional sales manager for AnyVision, said in an email to the school's administrators.

If efforts by states and cities to pass privacy regulations curbing the use of facial recognition are anything to go by, you might fear the worst for the companies building the technology. But a recent influx of investor cash suggests the facial recognition startup sector is thriving, not suffering. Facial recognition is one of the most controversial and complex policy areas in play. The technology can be used to track where you go and what you do. It's used by public authorities and in private businesses like stores.

Facial recognition technology has been banned by multiple US cities, including Portland, Boston, and San Francisco. Besides the very real risk of the tech being biased against minorities, the technology also carries with it an uneasy sense that we're creeping towards a surveillance state. Despite these concerns, though, work to improve facial recognition tech is still forging ahead, with both private companies and governments looking to harness its potential for military, law enforcement, or profit-seeking applications. One such company is an Israeli startup called AnyVision Interactive Technologies. AnyVision is looking to kick facial recognition up a notch by employing drones for image capture.

Sign in to report inappropriate content. Anyvision has built the world's leading facial recognition platform based on 20 years of academic research and field experience. Their solution is now used across multiple industries, globally. At this webinar, you will hear from, industry expert, Adnan Kichlu from Anyvision.

Microsoft is pulling out of an investment in an Israeli facial recognition technology developer as part of a broader policy shift to halt any minority investments in facial recognition startups, the company announced late last week. The decision to withdraw its investment from AnyVision, an Israeli company developing facial recognition software, came as a result of an investigation into reports that AnyVision's technology was being used by the Israeli government to surveil residents in the West Bank. The investigation, conducted by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his team at Covington & Burling, confirmed that AnyVision's technology was used to monitor border crossings between the West Bank and Israel, but did not "power a mass surveillance program in the West Bank." Microsoft's venture capital arm, M12 Ventures, backed AnyVision as part of the company's $74 million financing round which closed in June 2019. Investors who continue to back the company include DFJ Growth and OG Technology Partners, LightSpeed Venture Partners, Robert Bosch GmbH, Qualcomm Ventures, and Eldridge Industries.

Able to monitor multiple patients in separate rooms simultaneously; staying on top of their blood pressure, pulse and vital signs; and spotting signs of deterioration even before the patients feel it themselves. This medical superhero is not human, but rather a product of artificial intelligence, advanced software algorithms, sensors and cameras. And it's being assembled right now at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. The creation of an AI-powered "super nurse" is the result of a decade of steady work by Ahuva Weiss-Meilik and her team in the hospital's I-Medata center. "Our doctors and nurses can't be everywhere," Weiss-Meilik tells ISRAEL21c.

After a school shooting in Parkland, Florida left 17 people dead, RealNetworks decided to make its facial recognition technology available for free to schools across the US and Canada. If school officials could detect strangers on their campuses, they might be able to stop shooters before they got to a classroom. Anxious to keep children safe from gun violence, thousands of schools reached out with interest in the technology. Dozens started using SAFR, RealNetworks' facial recognition technology. From working with schools, RealNetworks, the streaming media company, says it's learned an important lesson: Facial recognition isn't likely an effective tool for preventing shootings.

The convergence of AI, 5G and edge computing is unleashing unprecedented opportunities for retailers in areas like customer experience and smarter AI-enabled stores. Attendees of NRF 2020, the world's largest retail expo, taking place Jan. 12-14 in New York, can see how NVIDIA is working with some of the most innovative solution providers to re-invent the retail industry. NVIDIA's edge computing offerings are powering ready-to-use AI applications that reduce shrinkage, optimize logistics and create operational efficiencies. The NVIDIA EGX edge computing platform enables retailers to scale the power of AI beyond data centers into local environments where data is gathered, such as in-store aisles, checkout counters and warehouses. Among them is AnyVision (NRF booth 1727), whose Store Insight software generates intelligence about customer behavior inside stores to optimize merchandising decisions.

In the wake of the May 2018 mass shooting that resulted in 10 deaths at Santa Fe (Texas) High School, the Santa Fe Independent School District looked at all possible options to improve school safety within reasonable financial constraints. The district considered the idea of technology to enhance its approximately 750 cameras with facial recognition but did not immediately see a workable solution -- for reasons of cost, and concerns about shaky accuracy that could lead to false positives, says Kip Robins, director of technology for Santa Fe ISD, which has about 4,500 students. The district ultimately contracted with a company called AnyVision, which demonstrated its Better Tomorrow product, an artificial-intelligence-based application that plugs into an existing camera network and provides the ability to do surveillance based on a certain face, body or object. School districts or other end users can create a watch list to keep an eye out for potential pedophiles, for example, or someone known to be mentally unstable. The Santa Fe ISD's solution is part of a growing cadre of software offerings that use artificial intelligence to power through reams of data and notice certain predetermined visual information – whether it's someone's face, or a certain license plate, or simply human movement in a place and time where there shouldn't be any.

Roundup Hello, here's a short but sweet round up of news from the world of machine learning beyond what we have already covered on El Reg. Microsoft funded an AI startup that spies on Palestinians: Microsoft invested in AnyVision, a company that supports a secret Israeli military project that surveils Palestinians travelling within the West Bank. Palestinians living in the contentious region occupied by Israel can only travel via designated checkpoints. The Israeli government also tracks their movements using CCTV cameras as they walk throughout eastern Jerusalem. The military project, supposedly codenamed "Google Ayosh," was carried out to search for specific people by matching the faces spotted on the cameras to a known database, according to NBC News.