Apple and Facebook bet on artificial intelligence

Emerging tech backed by tech giants

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as an early buzz phrase for 2016 after tech giants Apple and Facebook threw their weight behind the technology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) allows computers to interact and behave in a more human-like way, through things such as visual and speech recognition.

The technology is not new - IBM has been developing its "cognitive computing" strategy for a number of years, for example - but in the past week alone, Apple and Facebook have backed the trend.

In a new year blog post, Faceboook founder Mark Zuckerberg said his personal challenge for the year is to build a simple system based on AI. "You can think of it like Jarvis in Iron Man," he said.

Zuckerberg said he will teach the system to understand his voice so it can control "everything in our home", from lights and music to temperature.

"I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell," he added. "I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's [his daughter, Maxima] room that I need to check on when I'm not with her. On the work side, it will help me visualise data in virtual reality to help me build better services and lead my organisations more effectively."

Apple is getting in on the AI action too, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

The publication claims the tech giant confirmed its acquisition of Emotient - a tech firm specialising in AI.

The US outfit uses its technology to read humans' emotions through its facial-recognition kit. It claims to be part of the "neuromarketing" trend which allows marketers to measure and track the feelings of those it is targeting through "emotion detection and sentiment analysis".

"Our services quantify emotional response, leading to insights and actions that improve your products and how you market them," its website says.

An Apple representative confirmed the buy to the WSJ but had nothing further to share.