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Simya VC Invests in Syntonym — Generative AI for Privacy
We are proud to announce our investment in Syntonym. Syntonym is a generative AI startup that anonymizes faces in videos and images in real-time for privacy purposes. Syntonym is one of the early pioneers of generative AI globally and is currently the only player within the Synthetic Media landscape to achieve hyperrealism in real time on a mobile CPU.
The Pain is Hidden in the Dilemma — Privacy vs Utility
Systems and applications that utilize visual data are on the rise. These systems are everywhere, in our cars, public transportation, and mobile devices. Especially in the mobility industry, vehicles are equipped with cameras. For autonomous vehicles, cameras are a must-have equipment. All these cameras are constantly capturing and processing visual data. This creates a high risk of privacy infringement.
Large-scale adoption of various technologies relies heavily upon high-utility visual data for AI/ML training and analytics. To comply with evolving privacy regulations, technology developers use techniques (blurring, etc.) that cause structural and functional losses in visual data, leading to a dilemma between ensuring privacy & maintaining utility.
Privacy is not an accessible feature on video-capable platforms, and users cannot interact in the digital domain without revealing their faces and identity. The users either show their faces on those platforms or don’t use and enjoy them. The same dilemma stands for corporations as well as users.
How Does Syntonym Resolve the Dilemma?
Syntonym maximizes privacy compliance by removing sensitive biometric data in images and video while preserving valuable analytical metrics to enable model training and advanced video analytics.
Syntonym’s core technology is hyper-realistic synthetic face generation with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). It leverages the generative power of GANs to replace existing faces in images and videos with non-existing, synthetically generated faces. Solutions achieve real-time algorithmic and perceptual data anonymization by preserving key analytical metrics, including head pose, facial expressions, and eye movements.
Syntonym solves privacy as a compliance problem for corporations. Syntonym ensures lossless camera data anonymization based on GDPR and other privacy laws. It empowers businesses to maximize privacy protection and demonstrate compliance with evolving regulations.
Syntonym solves privacy as a product and technology problem for apps and platforms. It empowers users to seamlessly interact without revealing their faces to create a new dimension of video engagement. Syntonym achieves privacy-enhancing AI models to offer hyper-realistic synthetic faces in real-time with privacy-protected digital engagement end-users.
Why Invest in Syntonym?
Investments in AI companies focusing on privacy and data protection have increased due to increasing concerns about data breaches and privacy violations. Companies like Syntonym will be crucial in developing innovative solutions to address these challenges.
Simya VC’s investment in Syntonym aligns with its investment thesis of global potential, innovative technology, and a strong and persistent founding team. Syntonym proves this alignment with having a creative solution to a globally validated problem and being one of the early pioneers of Generative AI. The most crucial criterion in our decision is the resilient founding team, who were accepted to the Alchemist Accelerator program.
Founder Batuhan Ozcan and his team have all the skills and personal qualities to make Syntonym a global success.
Welcome to the Simya VC portfolio, Syntonym!
Partner, Simya VC