Facebook is not the only social network working on AI and machine learning these days. Twitter has been silently buying machine learning technology firms every summer since 2014, and is continuing this trend with the acquisition of Magic Pony Technology, a London-based machine learning company.
Not that this is of particular interest, but Twitter is allegedly paying $150 million for the company which focuses on visual processing in machine learning. Of more importance is the question of what Twitter is preparing with all the tech it has buying. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey announced the acquisition in a recent blog post, explaining that,
[quote]Machine learning is increasingly at the core of everything we build at Twitter. It’s powering much of the work we’re doing to make it easier to create, share and discover the very best content so that every time you open Twitter, you’re immersed in the most relevant news, stories and events for you.[/quote]
He goes on to remind us that the acquisition
[quote]builds on other investments […] in machine learning, beginning with the acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015.[/quote]
The team behind Magic Pony is joining a “team of engineers, data scientists and machine learning researchers” called Twitter Cortex which is “dedicated to building a product in which people can easily find new experiences to share and participate in”.
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The technology will be used to strengthen live and video offerings on Twitter (whatever exactly that means)… and we can assume that the company will be incorporating algorithms for Twitter’s systems to understand and identify imagery. The cryptic announcement from Magic Pony says that their technology will be used “to improve the visual experiences that are delivered across [Twitter’s] apps”.
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Either way, it is business as usual until Twitter starts rolling out some incredibly cool features with the technology it has just acquired. What do you think Twitter is working on?
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