Amazon

Amazon, face, mobile, payments

Amazon files mobile face recognition patent for payments

Amazon will soon accept mobile payments using selfies instead of passwords (Silicon Republic)

Amazon has filed a patent application for technology that will allow users to authenticate a payment using a photo or video in a seamless way that doesn’t necessarily require passwords.

“The user is identified using image information which is processed utilising facial recognition. The device verifies that the image information corresponds to a living human using one or more human-verification processes,” the patent reads.

Amazon, ear, mobile

Amazon envisions another way to unlock a phone: Ear photos

Forget Fingerprint Scanners, Amazon is Interested in Using Your Ears to Unlock the Phone — Here’s Why it’s Better (Technology Personalized)

The world’s largest e-commerce company was granted a patent last week that reveals company’s intention to ease up the unlocking mechanism in a phone when a user receives a call without any security tradeoff.

No need to forget fingerprint scanners just yet, though.

Amazon, technology, voice

Sorting out voice technologies

On the occasion of Amazon’s purchase of Ivona, The Verge has a good article sorting out various voice technologies.

 Key bit:

  • Text-to-speech: reads text that’s already been written into something approaching a human-sounding voice (Ivona, AT&T, Microsoft, many others);
  • Speech-to-text: transcribes what you say word-for-word into text (Dragon, Yap);
  • Voice recognition: biometric that knows who you are based on your voice (like in Sneakers);
  • Natural-language AI: transcribes speech and/or parses text, looking for keywords and structure to turn ordinary sentences into computer queries (Siri’s core technology).

    • Those interested in voice tech should click through.