Google buys a French start-up in artificial intelligence – Le Figaro

The American group got hold of Moodstocks, a French company developing a program to recognize images and objects on his smartphone.

The video lasts 16 seconds. A person spends three objects before the camera of a smartphone: a dart gun foam, a cup, a bag. Each time, the phone recognizes the object and its brand in seconds. This technology apparently simple but extremely complex, developed by the French company Moodstocks. She said Wednesday its acquisition by Google, for an unknown amount.

Founded in 2007, Moodstocks is a start-up specializing in image recognition. Its solutions are used by several large customers in France as Fnac, La Redoute and Leroy Merlin. The company allows developers to use its technology to create new services based on image recognition: in food, fashion, furniture … In 2014, Moodstocks bought another French company, Modaclic, giving rise to an application to buy clothes seen in a magazine, taking their picture.

“France is full of talents in engineering and research,” commented Vincent Simonet, Head research and development at Google France, in a blog post. “We look forward to working with the team Moodstoks and see what we can develop together.” Google has already acquired two French start-up three years ago: Flexicore and Sparrow. Team Moostocks join the center of R & amp; D Google in Paris. A hundred engineers are already working there. One third of them are assigned to the cultural institute, the initiative of the search engine for the digitization and dissemination of art. The others work on YouTube and the Chrome browser.

Moodstoks employees will usher them a new center dedicated to artificial intelligence. Google has already invested this sector through the acquisition of the English company Deepmind. The latter especially developed AlphaGo program, which recently broke the world best player of go game. Moodstocks the technology could be particularly useful in the search engine. It could for example improve its price comparison service, allowing users to photograph an object seen in the store, or pictures of filing application. Facebook itself is working on this kind of artificial intelligence capable of recognizing faces, dog breeds or objects. The social network has opened a laboratory dedicated to the subject in 2015, also in Paris.