APRIL 2020 MACWORLD 39different. The company,
Xnor.ai, might not be
one you’ve ever heard
of, but they’re hardly
unknown. Since last
summer, the Seattle-
based startup’s tech has
been the brains behind
the popular Wyze cam’s
marquee feature:
people detection.
Simply put, it allowed
the $20 camera to
distinguish between
faces, pets, and dust,
and vastly improved its
abilities, putting it on a somewhat level
playing field with the far-more-expensive
Ring and Nest cams of the world.
But it’s not just that Xnor.ai’s engine
worked on a budget cam, it’s how it
worked. Not only did it vastly improve the
capability of the pint-sized recorder, but it
also did it with privacy in mind. Using
something called Edge AI, Xnor.ai was
able to process its algorithm engine on the
camera itself, meaning it didn’t need to
transmit images to a far-away cloud.
That cuts to Apple’s main privacy
argument. We’ve long suspected that the
reason why Siri lags Google Assistant and
Amazon Alexa is that Apple doesn’t collect
the same kind of information that those
companies do and is thus at a
disadvantage. Google and Amazon may
offer the ability to toggle privacy settings,
but the core business model relies on data
collection. It’s easier to improve AI
processing when you have a mountain of
data to work with, especially when you’re
dealing with millions of users. But maybe it
doesn’t have to be that way.SIRI SAFE AND SOUND
That’s where Xnor.ai comes in, and likely
why Apple deemed it worthy of several
million dollars. I don’t think Siri’s
development (or lack thereof) is the result
of malaise or a lack of focus from Apple,
but rather the capabilities of the AI engine.
Apple wants to process as much as it can
on the device, but the reality is that it’s justWyze’s people detection ran completely on the device, so there
was no fear of video being hacked.