Apple buys Danish start-up for cutting people from backgrounds

Apple has reportedly bought the Danish start-up Spektral. The engineers of the company worked on a technique to separate people and backgrounds in a camera image in real time. Apple has not confirmed the acquisition.

Apple would have paid 200 million Danish crowns, about 27 million euros, for Spektral, reports Borsen a Danish newspaper. Spektral started as CloudCutout and specialized in separating people and backgrounds in live videos. One of the founders of Spektral has changed his employer on LinkedIn to Apple, where he is working on ‘Computational Imaging’.

It is unknown what Apple wants with the technology of the company. The most obvious application is a portrait mode that works in videos. That is currently only possible in photos. Moreover, it will then be possible to cut people from the camera image into videos and add them to another background, such as a green screen works on TV. That might be useful within Apple’s ARKit platform. Apple has not confirmed or denied the takeover.