Apple has acquired an Israel-based facial recognition company. Called RealFace, the company was founded in 2014 and is thought to employ no more than ten people; 
it was purchased for somewhere around two million dollars, according to speculation.
The startup was working on technology that would replace password-based login on smartphones with biometric authentication via face scan. It’s only the latest in a line of facial recognition-focused acquisitions by Apple, with the US-based company having purchased firms like Emotion and Faceshift a little over a year ago.
As usual, Apple hasn’t commented on the acquisition or how it intends to apply the technology. There has recently been speculation that the company is working to bring facial recognition to this year’s iPhone, and there was speculation last autumn that Apple was working on a smart home hub product, based on its Siri AI system, that could also use facial recognition. Meanwhile, Apple is already using a kind of facial recognition to organize images in its Photos app.
Sources: AppleInsider, Start-Up Israel
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