Startup to Pitch Face-Scanning Privacy App at SXSW

Hummingbirds AI will be looking to accelerate its business when it makes the trip to next month’s SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. To that end, the company has revealed that it will be one of 50 finalists pitching angel investors and venture capitalists as part of the SXSW Pitch Festival during the first weekend of the event.

At the Festival, Hummingbirds will be competing with its GuacamoleID solution in the Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Voice category. GuacamoleID is a facial authentication product that officially debuted at CES earlier this year, and provides continuous identity verification for people using devices equipped with a camera.

In that regard, GuacamoleID operates much like any other face-based access control solution, in the sense that it uses facial recognition to ensure that only registered users can gain access to sensitive materials. However, GuacamoleID takes things a step further to provide ongoing identity verification beyond an initial login. The solution will automatically revoke access if it does not recognize the person in front of the screen, and can also monitor the background to thwart any spies that might try to look over a legitimate user’s shoulder. In those cases, the platform will similarly pull access if an unfamiliar face enters the camera’s field of vision.

The SXSW Pitch Festival will kick off on March 12 and wrap up with an Awards Ceremony on Sunday, March 13. The winning startups in each of the 10 categories will be announced at that time, while one of those winners will be declared Best in Show for the entire event. The 50 finalists (five in each category) for the 14^th annual Pitch Festival were selected from an applicant pool of 655 total companies.

Hummingbirds noted that the majority (82 percent) of Pitch Festival participants have secured funding, while 17 percent would go on to be acquired by a tech giant like Apple or Google. Smart Eye Technology has also released a document sharing app that hides the screen if it notices a potential snoop.

(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)