PATENT DROP: Snap can show you the world
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PATENT DROP: Snap can show you the world
Plus: Microsoft’s digital bouncer; Uber weighs AVs
Happy Monday and welcome to Patent Drop!
Today, we’re checking out tech from Snap that aims to help users get to know the world (and the brands) around them. Plus, Microsoft wants to make sure you’re actually at your desk, and Uber wants to test the limits of its self-driving fleet.
Let's take a peek.
#1. Snap’s photo album
Snap wants to help you make sense of the world around you.
The company is seeking to patent a method for “insight presentation” in Snapchat’s user interface using automated image processing. This tech works by using machine vision for identification and machine learning for categorization, to generate a “content collection” that identifies and organizes the features of a particular image or video.
For example, if you record a Snapchat video at a basketball game, this system can identify your location and activity as such, and generate a content collection around basketball games. Additionally, this system aggregates and presents tons of data related to the content, such as teams playing, scores or game times. If this content is posted publicly or by a business, the content collections are presented as a story for other users.
To maintain privacy, non-public content, such as a private or friends-only story, is “categorized anonymously as part of a general assessment of system usage,” allowing any data related to the content to be put to use without revealing account-specific information.
“Machine vision can be used to identify content categories or content types (e.g. image subjects such as cats, brand associations, places, etc.) which are represented in images,” Snap said in its filing. “The system then uses this information in a variety of ways while maintaining user privacy.”
Essentially, it allows users to better understand their surroundings through photos taken on the Snapchat app, whether it be sporting event scores, a restaurant’s ratings, or (in a potentially lucrative use case for Snap), the brand of an item in a photo.
Snap’s digital advertising scheme is much more personal than its competitors. Rather than only placing ads in people’s feeds or in-between stories, Snap integrates their advertising into filters and AR experiences. The tech in this patent could represent a new avenue of advertising with a deeper level of user connection, Jake Maymar, VP of Innovation at The Glimpse Group, told me.
For example, if you take a photo of your friend at an event and they happen to be wearing a certain brand of sneakers, Snap may be able to identify that product and allow you to make online purchases in-app.
“Snap has actually been really smart in how they do their advertising. They make it fun, they make it interesting, they make it directly connected to you,” said Maymar. “It feels like the next possible thing is users are going to be able to click on these items and buy them, and also know what's popular.”
Snap could also leverage the data it’s gathering to make these content collections to help brands better understand demographics they didn’t know they had. For instance, if Snap identifies a brand that often pops up users that post in similar content categories, the company could partner with that brand for an advertising campaign targeting that group, said Maymar.
A new way to advertise to users – without them feeling like they’re being advertised to – could be just what the company needs to breathe life into its stagnant advertising business. Snap missed Wall Street’s revenue targets in the first quarter, reporting a top line of $989 million, a 6% year over year decline. CEO Evan Spiegel said the company is working on “significant improvements to our advertising platform to help drive increased return on investment for our advertising partners.”
Given that this patent application was filed just in January, passive, embedded advertising may be part of its comeback plan.
#2. Microsoft checks you out
Bad news for anyone that bought a WFH mouse jiggler: Microsoft wants to know that there’s actually a person sitting behind the screen.
The company is seeking to patent a method of verifying network communications using what it calls “proof of presence.” This tech allows communication between two devices on a network by verifying that the right person is actually physically on the other end of the screen to receive the message.
One example Microsoft outlined to make this work is biometric authentication. For instance, if a user wants to receive a message using this system, they may be prompted to allow their device to take a photo of them, which would then be compared with a “previously captured biometric of the user.” The system would expect a “certain level of difference” between each biometric, aiming to catch if the information was stolen (i.e., if a bad actor used the same photo of a user twice to gain access to the system).
Microsoft said this kind of tech aims to cut down on phishing attacks and security breaches by requiring users to regularly verify who they are communicating with.
“That makes it far more difficult for another user to step in and pretend to be the particular trusted entity (and thereby fraudulently elicit sensitive information),” Microsoft noted.
While biometric authentication isn’t novel in and of itself, Microsoft’s application of it could make remote access to sensitive files much easier and much more secure, said Patrick Juola, Ph.D., professor of computer science and cybersecurity studies coordinator at Duquesne University.
“This lets you do things at one step removed,” Juola said. “It’s easier for me to validate myself across an insecure channel – I don't have to worry about some criminal at an internet café.”
But one roadblock in Microsoft’s security plan is ensuring that this tech is actually secure. While the company’s patent filing claims that this tech has bulwarks in place for stolen biometrics, security systems that promise this level of safety need to be unwavering, especially when dealing with sensitive and private communications. Otherwise, customers are using tech that isn’t as strong as Microsoft claims, it could lead to users trusting a flawed security system and taking risks they otherwise wouldn’t, Juola said.
“Before you look at any security system, the first question you have to ask is, ‘How could this be broken up?’” He said. “That's the first question the bad guys are going to ask, but they're not just going to ask, they're going to try it out.”
Microsoft has a lot of incentive to up its security game. For one, the company may be attempting to right its wrongs, having suffered several data breaches in recent years, including a recent leak of 2.4 terabytes of vulnerable data, affecting more than 65,000 companies and 548,000 users from October.
But an even bigger incentive could be the massive moneymaker that patenting this tech could present, Juola said.
“With Microsoft Word, the docx format has established itself as a standard,” he said. “They’re hoping that this particular system will end up becoming a standard, so that anyone who wants to remotely authenticate themselves will license this system from Microsoft.”
#3. Uber’s self-driving judge
As Uber races to build up its fleet of autonomous vehicles, the company wants to make sure they’re actually up to every task.
The company is seeking to patent a method for “selective autonomous vehicle ridership and control.” Essentially, this tech determines if the capabilities of a self-driving vehicle are compatible with a user’s request. The system does this by looking at the user’s request, the user’s profile data and history, and the abilities of the vehicle.
On the user side, the system may evaluate a user’s passenger rating to make sure it’s above a certain threshold when deciding whether or not to match them with an autonomous vehicle. The system may also take into account a user’s past “product adoption rate,” or how often they try new products Uber has to offer, to consider whether or not they’d be receptive to a self-driving ride.
On the vehicle side, the system would check that the requested route and destination are within a particular self-driving vehicle’s capabilities, such as if the car is able to not take “U-turns and unprotected left turns because the vehicle's autonomy capabilities do not allow for such maneuvers.”
Uber said its goal with this system is to improve AV capabilities to increase adoption of self-driving rides among its users. The filing rattled off a list of potential benefits of AVs, including reduced traffic congestion, environmental health, improved safety and user experience, and helping those with “reduced mobility and/or persons that are underserved by other transportation options.”
Uber has had a shaky relationship with self-driving vehicles over the years. After a crash involving a self-driving Uber killed a pedestrian in 2018, Uber shut down its AV unit, and eventually sold it to Aurora Innovation in the first quarter of 2021 for $4 billion. But the company didn’t leave its ambitions on a shelf: Uber struck two 10-year deals with autonomous vehicle companies, Nuro and Motional, in September and October, respectively.
In December, the company debuted its Motional robotaxi fleet for the first time in Las Vegas. At launch, safety operators were behind the wheel in case of an accident, but the company aims to remove the operators from the equation this year. The companies launched autonomous UberEats deliveries together last May, and plan to eventually expand the ride hailing service to Los Angeles.
Making its self-driving fleet as safe as possible is in Uber’s best interest given how regulators have cracked down on other auto companies in the self-driving space in recent months. Tesla has seen the most trouble, having been hit with 40 probes by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration just for concerns with its Full-Self Driving feature. The agency also launched an investigation into Cruise, GM’s robotaxi initiative, in December, for its vehicles reportedly causing accidents with abrupt stops and blocking roads.
If Uber wants to stand out among self-driving competitors, flying under the radar of the NHTSA may be its best bet.
Extra Drops
A few other fun ones before you swipe away.
Adobe is retracing your steps. The company is seeking to patent “intelligent change summarization” for designers, which essentially generates a summary of every adjustment made to a design.
Sony wants to be your personal trainer. The company wants to patent tech for monitoring exercise “in a gym environment,” which essentially uses cameras to create “3D representations” of your workout. (Just in case strangers staring at you while you ride a spin bike wasn’t enough monitoring.)
Boeing wants to appeal to tech-savvy germaphobes. The aerospace manufacturer wants to patent a method for disinfecting hands which utilizes UV light emitters.
What else is new?
EU regulators approved Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The greenlight is a major win for the company after U.K. regulators blocked the deal last month.
Google is launching two new tools to help users identify misleading and AI-generated images. The feature, called ‘About this image,’ offers context about when and where an image first appeared online.
Amazon reportedly wants to use AI to make deliveries faster. The company wants to use the tech for “regionalization,” or cutting down the shipping distance between a customer and the product the order, an Amazon executive told CNBC.
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