Apple Just Bought Tech To Make Your iPhone An Art Critic

Every once in a while, we'll hear about Apple buying up a company few have heard of. Today is one of those days, as it's been revealed that Apple has purchased a small company called Regaind. As always, Apple is hesitant to comment on why a certain company attracted its attention or what it plans to do with that company's technology, but once you hear what Regaind was working on, Apple's interest should become immediately clear.

According to TechCrunch, which uncovered details of the buyout, Regaind is a small French company that was making a "computer vision API to analyze the content of photos" when it was bought up by Apple. This includes the ability to analyze faces in the attempt to determine the subject's age, gender, and mood. Given Apple's efforts concerning smart search within the iPhone's Photos app and Face ID in the iPhone X, the appeal of adding Regaind to its portfolio should be obvious.

While Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that it did indeed buy Regaind, it stopped short of revealing any plans for the company or its technology. It's unlikely that we'll ever see Apple get specific with how it plans to use Regaind's work. Instead, Apple will probably silently integrate Regaind's technology into existing products, or use it as the basis for new features across its hardware.

It's unknown if Regaind played any role in the creation of Face ID. Though Apple purchased Regaind earlier in the year, that may not have afforded enough time to properly integrate Regaind's technology into Face ID, which was almost certainly in development at the time the deal went through. However, the technology Regaind has been developing could almost certainly inform future versions of Face ID.

We may see a more immediate effect on Photos' smart search. While smart search currently identifies the subject of your photo, Regaind's API can find and sort photos by their general aesthetic. Given enough time and some more development, this could certainly make future iOS smart search iterations even more useful.