Queen Mary University of London: Queen Mary University of London spin-off provides the blueprint for new game-changing AI applications
The Q3 2022 acquisition became a component of Veritone’s new solution Tracker, an AI-powered object video recognition product based on VSL technology.
Veritone Tracker leverages AI to track objects through video recognition software without performing facial recognition or other biometric identification that would reveal a person’s identity. This is a game changer given concerns around privacy and maintaining the integrity of personally identifiable information when using AI for this purpose.
VSL was founded in 2007 by Professor Gong, building on his decades of pioneering research to develop systems that can be used to track and identify public space activities of people and vehicles. VSL is internationally renowned for its technology for Person Re-Identification (RE-ID), a privacy preserving computer vision technology for public safety and security applications. Person RE-ID is the mechanism to find a person at different locations over different times in a vast quantity of video data collected from distributed cameras. It does this without using facial imagery features or any other physical characteristics.
RE-ID is unique compared to other biometric-based approaches, such as facial recognition, where multiple images are required for every individual to be matched.
Professor Gong’s research is already being used to aid security and crime prevention, as AI-based RE-ID systems enable searching for people when facial recognition is not possible. This might be because of poor lighting, low-resolution imagery, or the subject looking away from view. The technology also allows users to identify people much more quickly compared to previous technologies. It has been commercialised and applied in different continents, even helping to solve a $32M criminal theft case in the US and a murder case in Australia.
Professor Sean Gong, founder and chief scientist of VSL and Professor of Visual Computation at Queen Mary University of London, said: “We are excited to join Veritone, a leading AI platform provider. Our new relationship will provide exciting opportunities and new challenges. We share its vision that ethical AI can build a better world, advance the quality of everyday life, and help with meeting the challenges for a safer, more responsible, and cleaner society.”