Bright AI was named the best start-up implementing Artificial Intelligence technology from a line-up of ten at the GTC Inception Awards in Munich.
In a three minute pitch, in front of panel of industry experts, Bright AI co-founder Marian Glaser explained that Bright AI could take images taken in bad weather, fog or poor lighting, and clear up the image and “remove impediments”.
On winning the award Bright AI will receive $100,000, an NVIDIA DGX supercomputer and will benefit from sales and marketing advice and technical support to help them grow faster and improve the performance of their AI technology.
Talking to Compelo Mr Glaser said: “We were up against extraordinarily good start-ups so we feel very proud to have won this.”
Explaining how the product works he added: “What we do is take raw images and apply perception layers on top to make the data better to understand.”
So far Bright AI have found success working with automotive companies who are collecting a lot of visual data in the development of self-driving cars.
Mr Glaser added: “The idea sparked with the thought that if an AI can improve my vision at night, what would this mean for my driving?
“And if it was bad weather could I use a camera on the car to see completely through fog?”
The importance of this was highlighted by events earlier this year when Uber’s driverless car hit and killed a pedestrian when being tested at night.
Bright AI were already developing their technology at the time and took the data Uber released from the collision and ran it through their night vision system.
Mr Glaser said the driverless car failed to detect a person in the images 92% of the time when looking at the raw image to being 84% certain that there was a person in the image once it had been cleared up by Bright AI.
Currently Bright AI are able to improve two to five frames per second, but with improved processing power and optimisation it would be possible to run it in real time on the vehicle.
Another, unexpected use, for the technology came alongside the introduction of EU regulation laws on data protection under GDPR.
“We were working with car companies already that were having vision issues and asking us to clear their images,” Mr Glaser said.
“Then, on the 25th May [when GDPR came into effect] they said: ‘Guys we have a problem, we cannot send you the data anymore.’”
Mr Glaser replied, informing the car companies that Bright AI’s software could also be used to make their visual data GDPR compliant, by anonymising people and removing number plates automatically.
“Companies are using more and more data but at the same time privacy laws have become more limiting,” he said.
“The question is how can Europe compete in the international innovation war in the world of AI.”
Bright AI believe they have the answer.
Other start-ups that pitched at the GTC Inception awards included Retina AI which offered an AI based solution to detecting the onset of blindness in patients at an earlier stage, Serket which used computers to monitor the health of livestock on farms and Conundrum which used AI to help improve manufacturing processes.
The GTC Inception Awards were started three years ago to help and nurture start ups working in the world of AI.