There are times when we are surprised at how quickly time passes. This week, here at Mult-Connect, we are celebrating 5 years since the launch of one of our first projects using artificial intelligence.

 

It is worth remembering, not only because it was a challenge to come up with a solution with such innovative technology at the time, with almost no technical information, but also because of the result.

 

I'm talking about “Family Faces” here, an application for mobile devices that uses facial recognition as a way to search for missing people.

 

In short, the app allows the user to take a photo and, through facial recognition, we verify that the person in the photo is not one of those we are looking for. We do this by comparing it with a database of missing people previously registered on our platform.

 

It may seem simple now, but 5 years ago there were big challenges to overcome and there were no similar use cases.

At the time, the project was recognized internationally and added to Microsoft’s “AI for Good” initiative.

 

Because of this, we had the opportunity to speak personally with Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, and give a presentation in a private meeting especially for him.

 

In our private conversation, he highly praised the technical efforts and expressed satisfaction that artificial intelligence can be used for good, which is precisely the goal of his program initiative.

 

In the photo, a curious moment:

In the morning, Brad Smith was the Keynote Speaker at the “AI for Good” event. In his talk, he showed a film produced by Microsoft about the cases he had selected. In this film, there is a long statement from me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later, after another talk at Microsoft, he came face to face with me and made the gesture you see in the photo, pointing at me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At that moment in the photo, he said to me:

 

Hey, You are the guy in that movie!

In Portuguese: Hey, you're the guy from the movie!

 

Soon after, we met and I was able to demonstrate our application. This case ended up on Jornal Nacional. (See the story by clicking here.)

 

One of those moments...

 

See below the film produced by Microsoft that Brad Smith presented: