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Milestone adds anonymisation technology

Milestone Systems recently acquired state-of-the-art anonymisation technology, brighter AI, opening up a range of new opportunities for video technology with anonymisation capabilities and privacy enhancement which protects data and enables full data privacy.

Louise Bou Rached.

brighter AI offers image and video anonymisation software powered by generative AI. Its solutions, Precision Blur and Deep Natural Anonymisation, redact faces and licence plates helping companies comply with data protection regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, APPI, and PIPL. It enables businesses across various industries to use publicly recorded camera data for analytics and AI. By using these solutions companies can mitigate their liability and the risks of fines, enhance their teams’ capacity, improve their time to market and drive innovation.

As facial recognition technology capabilities expand, the collection of public video data poses significant risks. brighter AI’s Precision Blur is the world’s most accurate face redaction solution. Deep Natural Anonymisation (DNAT) offers a privacy solution based on generative AI. It generates non-reversible synthetic face overlays to shield individuals from recognition while maintaining data quality and accuracy for analytics and machine learning.

The addition of brighter AI strengthens Milestone’s offerings for video management software, video surveillance as a service and video analytics and fuels the company’s ongoing growth journey in and beyond security. Additionally, brighter AI’s anonymisation technology serves as a cornerstone of the recently announced data library and AI model training tool Project Hafnia.

Project Hafnia

The advances of artificial intelligence raise concerns around data privacy across the world. One of the biggest challenges in developing AI solutions is finding and accessing sufficient data that can be used. Without data, there are no AI models to train, which are essential for existing AI technologies such as ChatGPT and Copilot.

Project Hafnia aims to build services and democratise AI-model training with high-quality, compliant video data, leveraging NVIDIA Cosmos Curator and AI model, fine-tuning microservices. Leveraging the NVIDIA platform, Milestone Systems’ Project Hafnia aims to be a service for data generators to share and utilise their data, and for developers, to access traceable and regulatory-compliant annotated video data.

Milestone aims to put the latest advances in Vision Language Models (VLM) and supporting data curation capabilities in the hands of as many developers as possible. One of the first service offerings is a VLM, fine-tuned using NVIDIA fine-tuning microservices on a large volume of compliant transportation data, curated using NVIDIA Cosmos Curator. The VLM’s accuracy and performance optimisations are tuned for running on NVIDIA GPUs and in NVIDIA’s video search and summarisation (VSS) AI blueprint.

This challenge is particularly significant in video data where it is even more difficult to find data that does not contain sensitive personal information. The solution lies within regulatory-compliant data, and this is what brighter AI’s anonymisation technology brings. The privacy-by-design tool developed by brighter AI solidifies Milestone’s position as a Responsible Technology company. Combining two European tech leaders with a focus on taking a responsible approach to AI development will be a significant contribution to the global AI and tech landscape.

The power of video with privacy

“brighter AI is a perfect match for Milestone. Their proven technology is top-notch and will give us a wider offering to existing and future technology partners and customers. The anonymisation tool for video technology will also enhance our focus on responsible technology. Even more important, our two company cultures are highly compatible. Having known brighter AI for a while, as we have an established collaboration on Project Hafnia, I have complete faith that this will be a great benefit for all. I am indeed very pleased to welcome our new colleagues to Milestone,” says Thomas Jensen, CEO of Milestone.

“The acquisition of brighter AI sheds light on Milestone’s vision of being a responsible video technology company, we understand how important privacy of data becomes when it comes to AI. Anonymisation solutions will become a core pillar of our Project Hafnia platform, which is set to redefine how compliant, high-quality video data is used to train AI. Secure, ethical, and transformative visual AI is Milestone’s commitment to upholding the highest standards of privacy with video technology” says Louise Bou Rached, director – Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Milestone Systems.

Founded in 2017 by Marian and Patrick Kern, brighter AI serves companies across various sectors and is the leading anonymisation solution for video data based on artificial intelligence. For the solution Deep Natural Anonymisation, which automatically detects a personal identifier such as a face and generates a synthetic replacement, brighter AI was named ‘Europe’s Hottest AI Startup’ by Nvidia.

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