NtechLab announces the opening of local offices in two cities in the United Arab Emirates. In the UAE the company will be focusing on public sector, projects for the needs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, banking sector and services for shopping malls and retail chains. The presence in Abu Dhabi and Dubai is expected to help NtechLab take up a significant share of the computer vision market in the UAE.
NtechLab is trumpeting its success in the recent Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in which the company’s facial recognition algorithm was found to have the highest biometric matching accuracy ever in three different categories of the 1:1 Verification benchmark. The algorithm from NtechLab scored the lowest error rate in the Visa Photos, Visa Border and Border Photos categories, and second for the Mugshot Photos database. The company says it has also tested in the top three for efficiency in identifying people wearing masks.
NtechLab will provide a range of computer vision analytics capabilities to Fesco Transportation Group for use at its facilities to digitalize processes, according to a company announcement. Under an agreement reached at the TransRussia forum, Fesco and NtechLab will deploy various intelligent video analytics technologies at the Commercial Port of Vladivostok for vehicle license plate recognition, video monitoring of sea vessels, automatic visual container counting and other applications.
Samuel Bendett, an advisor to the Russia Studies Program and the Center for Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence of the CNA Adversary Analysis Group: “One of the most famous Russian artificial intelligence companies is NTechLab. They develop facial recognition software and they are a globally recognized brand. And their solutions are actually some of the best in the world.”
NtechLab, which provides the face biometric technology used in Moscow’s massive public security system, has launched pilot projects in ten other cities, though Kommersant (as translated by Google) reports that funding challenges could slow or prevent an operational rollout. Some 3,000 cameras with supporting a facial recognition system are being installed in Nizhny Novgorod, where they will be used to watch for criminals, as well as people violating quarantine orders.
Next year, in cities across the world, expect to have your face scanned for levels of aggression. NtechLab, a Russian facial recognition company best known for the FindFace app once labelled the harbinger for the end of online privacy, says it’s currently testing «aggression detection» tech with plans for a full rollout to its surveillance partners and customers in 2021. To help it along the way, it’s just received $ 15 million from two sovereign wealth funds — one the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the other a mysterious, unnamed Middle East partner.
Facebook has revealed the winners of a competition for software that can detect deepfakes, doctored videos created using artificial intelligence. Third place went to Azat Davletshin, a senior deep learning engineer at the Russian company NtechLab, which is known for its work on facial recognition.
Some vendors and users of facial recognition say the technology works well enough on masked faces. «We can identify a person wearing a balaclava, or a medical mask and a hat covering the forehead,» says Artem Kuharenko, founder of NtechLab, a Russian company whose technology is deployed on 150,000 cameras in Moscow. He says that the company has experience with face masks through contracts in southeast Asia, where masks are worn to curb colds and flu.
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