Technology developer Apple has acquired a Swedish tech company that specializes in face recognition technology called Polar Rose at a price of $22 million, according to a Business Insider article.

While Apple already uses some mild forms of face recognition in its iPhoto digital picture organization software offerings, it is as of yet unclear what plans, if any, Apple has for the newly acquired technology.

Among the offerings from Polar Rose that Apple now controls are FaceCloud and FaceLib. FaceCloud is a server-side face recognition solution that enables adding face recognition to nearly any service controlled through the server and was aimed at Web-service providers, social networks and other companies or services that involve heavy use of digital photos.

FaceLib is a mobile solution that was available for use with Android and iPhone operating systems and enables on-device authentication.

Read the full story here.

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