Computer Vision / Video Analytics

AI Startup Aims To Redefine How People Interact with Technology

TwentyBN is a German/Canadian based AI startup that is using computer vision to redefine how people interact with technology. 
At NeurIPS in Montreal, Canada this week the company demonstrated a brand new computer vision based-avatar named Millie that is designed for retail and entertainment applications.
“Millie is a context-aware avatar that we’re showing for the very first time,” said Roland Memisevic, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

“For this particular use case a person stands in front of Millie, and what Millie does is she has a conversation,” said Memisevic. “Here we’ve put several pairs of sunglasses on the table and Millie is there to encourage you to try them out.”
“The deep scientific premise behind this project is that we believe that in order to teach a system to become smarter, to even have a conversation about things that are going on in the real world, you have to start with vision, you have to start with a camera, that’s what we did here,” said Memisevic.
Using NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, with the cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch deep learning framework, the company trained several computer vision systems on millions of human engagements generated on TwentyBN’s proprietary crowd-acting platform
The company says they are at the beginning of Millie’s journey towards a more robust human-like AI. In the future, they hope to increase her skill set and human understanding. They add that she might even be capable of serving as a workplace assistant,  dance instructor, and even a child’s learning partner.

The company is targeting the retail sector and entertainment venues as possible use cases for Millie.  
The company is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program, NVIDIA’s AI startup incubator program. To learn more about the program visit our website.

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