AI Inspiration #6: Disney’s Facial Recognition Audience Tester; Why Good Data Matters; AR’s Post-Dorky Future
Here’s everything that’s new in artificial intelligence and computer vision, with a little tech pop culture to make the medicine go down. Our logic is undeniable.
“A defeat learned from is more important than an empty victory.”

HAS E-SPORTS MET ITS AI MATCH?
Just when e-sports are beginning to take off, along comes an artificial intelligence bot that can easily defeat some of the world’s best Dota 2 pro gamers. And the part that stings is that it took only two weeks of playing itself for OpenAI’s bot to get there, prompting the company’s founder, Elon Musk, to once again warn about the dangers of AI, which he says creates “vastly more risk than North Korea.”
Read more at The Washington Post >>
THIS BOT KNOWS IF YOU WASHED YOUR HANDS OR NOT
Washing hands is essential when working in a hospital, where infections are the name of the game. Stanford researchers are testing out image recognition cameras in three hospitals that can tell if people use liquid disinfectant when going between wards. The idea is not only to reduce infection rates, but also optimize the locations of disinfectant machines where people are more likely to use them. The machine will handle it!
Read more at Digital Trends >>
THE MACHINE SARTORIALIST
Computers with street style? Yes. Cornell Tech researchers recently trained a neural network on millions of social media snaps featuring sharply dressed denizens of world fashion capitals in order to determine what’s hot and what’s not (and where). Next up: the robot editrix.
Read more at Cornell Chronicle >>
BADVERTISING THAT BANISHES ITSELF, AND OTHER COOL ADS OF THE FUTURE
Facial recognition that knows your mood and serves you an appropriate ad (or no ad) accordingly, sales offers based on your vital signs and dynamically generated billboards on the walls of your self-driving car. These are just some of the ways that computer vision and AI will transform the marketing experience in the future. Read on for four key areas where science is already catching up to sci-fi.
NO NEED TO FIT THE MOCAP SUIT, JOHNNY BRAVO
On the recent indie game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, computer vision was used to power real-time facial motion capture, eliminating the need for taped markers across actors’ faces, silly mocap suits or pricey studio bookings. Cubic Motion’s technology brings heretofore unattainable big-budget production value to independent game developers and filmmakers.
WHY YOU’LL NEVER NEED TO RECOGNIZE ANOTHER FACE AGAIN
In the future, you won’t have to worry about remembering anyone’s name or their interests, because AR will do it for you. Blippar’s Halos app for Android and iOS offers a taste of what this experience might look like. Just aim your smartphone camera at the face of anyone else who also has the app, and facial recognition will instantly kick in different on-screen bubbles highlighting different profile points about that person. Think of it as an augmented reality profile.