Using Augmented Reality, Octi has created a new social network to connect the experience of meeting your family and friends in real life by viewing digital content, such as their favorite YouTube videos and Spotify songs.
As I wrote about the startup in 2018, it was creating AR technologies that could do an excellent job of understanding the human body and movement. Justin Fuisz (pictured above) co-founder and CEO last week told me that this was “a really cool feature,” but Octi’s backers pushed him to “do more, move deeper.” Speaking of those assets, the company reports that it has now raised $12 million in Live Nation investment, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Peter Diamandis ‘ Bold Capital Partners, Human Ventures, I2BF, Day One Investments, Tom Conrad, Scott Belsky and Josh Kushner (including a previously announced seed round of $7.5 million)
Fuisz explained last week what he nowadays sees as the “mic drop” moment for Octi — opening the new device and aiming his iPhone camera at a colleague. The app remembered her immediately, which prompted Fuisz to give her a request for a contact. And once the request was approved, Fuisz could see her again through the camera, surrounded by a floating “string” of virtual items she had made from videos, songs, and photos.
Octi also lets you add enjoyable effects and stickers. Your mates, too, will change your profile, make you put on a funny hat or give you a rousing daytime theme song.
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To build a quick and easy facial recognition experience, Fuisz said Octi is powered by an “on the edge neural network,” allowing the app to process photos on the computer in a privacy-friendly manner (instead of uploading them to the cloud).
He said the company has taken more measures to automate the operation, such as prioritizing friends-of-friends instead of looking through everyone’s faces in the network, culminating in a device that can recognize a peer in as little as 20 milliseconds.
Although Octi allows you to access the profiles of friends directly, it’s worth highlighting that the core interface is intended to be customized. In reality, the company provided a quote from analyst Rich Greenfield describing the device as “an impressive technology that offers adolescents a compelling reason to be present and interact through their phones, when engaging with their closest friends.”
I asked if a new social paradigm often offers new opportunities for harassment and bullying, but Fuisz renowned that, for now, Octi profiles and belts are merely available to the friends you accepted. So if you do something you don’t like about one of your relations, “you just say goodbye. That’s it. That’s an easy way to handle it.
