The startup behind the Prisma style transfer app is shifting focus onto the b2b space, building tools for developers that draw on its expertise using neural networks and deep learning technology to power visual effects on mobile devices. It's launched a new website, Prismalabs.ai, detailing this new offering. Initially, say Prisma's co-founders, they'll be offering an SDK for developers wanting to add effects like style transfer and selfie lenses to their own apps -- likely launching an API mid next week. Then, in the "next month or so", they also plan to offer another service for developers wanting help to port their code to mobile. This was, after all, how the co-founders originally came up with the idea for the Prisma app -- having seen a style transfer effect working (slowly) on a desktop computer and realized how much potential it would have if it could be made to work in near real-time on mobile.

Initially, say Prisma's co-founders, they'll be offering an SDK for developers wanting to add effects like style transfer and selfie lenses to their own apps -- likely launching an API mid next week. The wave of augmented reality apps that are coming down the smartphone pipe, driven by more powerful hardware and active encouragement from mobile platforms, could also help generate demand for Prisma's effects, reckons Moiseenkov, as they can offer object tracking as well as face tracking via APIs or an SDK. "We want to explore the CV [computer vision] area and help companies also produce a greater user experience with AI -- helping people to communicate easier, to solve their tasks," adds Moiseenkov. The app achieved its effects not by applying filters to the photo but by utilizing neural networks and deep learning to process the original photo in the chosen style -- generating a new image that combined both input sources.

The startup behind the Prisma style transfer app is shifting focus onto the b2b space, building tools for developers that draw on its expertise using neural networks and deep learning technology to power visual effects on mobile devices. It's launched a new website, Prismalabs.ai, detailing this new offering. Initially, say Prisma's co-founders, they'll be offering an SDK for developers wanting to add effects like style transfer and selfie lenses to their own apps -- likely launching an API mid next week. Then, in the "next month or so", they also plan to offer another service for developers wanting help to port their code to mobile. This was, after all, how the co-founders originally came up with the idea for the Prisma app -- having seen a style transfer effect working (slowly) on a desktop computer and realized how much potential it would have if it could be made to work in near real-time on mobile.

IPhone owners will get an upgrade on September 13 that allows them to find a picture of nearly anyone or anything, anywhere and from any time. Neural network artificial intelligence in the new iOS 10 performs 11 billion calculations in a tenth of a second on each photo snapped to figure out who people are and even what mood they're in. Aipoly, an app released in January, recognizes objects and speaks their names aloud to blind people. Google Translate can replace text in one language with another language as soon as you point your camera at it. All this happens even if you can't get cell reception.

Last week, I was in San Francisco's Mission District, betwixt testing Prisma filters on my photos, and enjoying the fine cuisine, when I noticed an actual painting of the Golden Gate Bridge on the wall. "It's like Prisma in real life," I reacted. In today's technology-fueled hyper-sensualized world, one of the many symptoms is a blurring of the line between art and design. Design is function-oriented, and though some readily fetishize consumer electronics as art objects, the bounds of design are neatly wrapped in utility. Art, on the other hand, is characterized by an effort that redefines the confines of knowledge with a particular emphasis on questioning the boundaries of emotions, politics, and society.

People across the world are turning amateur photos into elaborate works of art with a new viral app that relies on AI technology to let users instantly transform mundane images into Picasso paintings. Prisma, an app that has attracted 1 million daily users as of Thursday, is reinventing the concept of filtering photos with technology. While the concept of adding filters to photos has been around for years, the Prisma iOS app is unique in the way that it relies on a "combination of neural networks and artificial intelligence" to remake the image. What that means is the Prisma tools aren't the kind of art filters that Instagram uses where the filters overlay the original photo. Instead, Prisma goes through different layers and recreates the photo from scratch, according to the app makers, who are based in Moscow.

AI is coming for your paintbrush too… A new iOS app, called Prisma, is using deep learning algorithms to turn smartphone photos into stylized artworks based on different artwork/graphical styles. Snap or choose your photo, select an'art filter' to be applied and then wait as the app works its algorithmic magic -- returning your stylized image in a matter of seconds, along with options to share it to your social networks. So if you've ever wanted your bedroom to resemble a rotoscope animation, or your selfie to have shades of manga, or your hopeless sketching skills not to hold back your yearning to create a web comic then Prisma is definitely the app for you… Prisma was launched only last week but has already garnered some 1.6 million downloads, CEO and co-founder Alexey Moiseenkov tells TechCrunch, on the phone from Moscow where the team is currently based. The key to this early growth is clearly the app's prominently placed social share function, which prompts users to post to Instagram as soon as they receive their processed shot. And just this week the Facebook-owned photo-sharing behemoth revealed it had more than doubled its monthly active users over the past two years -- reaching a whopping 500 million MAUs.