Google to do Image & Face Recognition

In a quick follow-up to this speculation about Google using Gmail photos to build a facial recognition database, Google just announced they acquired Neven Vision, a company that develops technology to detect and recognize objects and persons in images. While Google is currently spinning this as a new way to help organize your photos (the software could automatically group all images on a hard drive with one’s ex-girlfriend’s face in it), it could also be integrated into their image search engine (to automatically find all images on the web with one’s ex-girlfriend’s face in it) or to create a mobile version so when you snap a picture of a random person on the street, Google can tell you if her face happens to be someone else’s ex-girlfriend.

[via Google Operating System]