SIA New Member Profile: Trueface

Trueface software

New Security Industry Association (SIA) member Trueface – a team of artificial intelligence and machine learning experts – works to develop robust computer vision solutions that make clients’ environments safer and smarter. The company is headquartered in Venice, California, with a team in Morocco and clients in 11 countries around the world.

SIA spoke with Shaun Moore, CEO of Trueface, about the company, the security industry and working with SIA.

Tell us the story of your company.

Shaun Moore
Shaun Moore

SM: Trueface was originally founded in 2013 as Chui, a manufacturer of the world’s first-ever smart doorbell with facial recognition. After nearly four years of creating custom hardware and building out the underlying facial recognition technology, Chui launched its first commercial access-control product – the Chui Doorbell. Shortly after launch in 2016, my co-founder, Nezare Chafni, and I began to see tremendous value in the software powering each doorbell as well as the opportunity to leverage the software across a variety of industries. Immediately, the team began working on a version of the software that could be licensed to businesses, and in early 2017 our first open API was launched and Trueface was born.

With a viable software-as-a-service offering, Trueface was accepted into Batch 22 of 500 Startups in the summer of 2017 and began generating revenue from its ID verification and facial recognition solutions. Today, Trueface focuses on three product deployments: software development kits (SDKs), dockerized APIs and Trueface Aware, a no-code app that sits atop video management systems. As a result of COVID-19, Trueface has applied developer solutions to solve issues like contactless elevated temperature checks, social distancing requirements and personal protective equipment compliance. Trueface currently powers applications that range from face recognition to real-time license plate analysis to automated age verification in casinos. 

Within one month of launching the Trueface COVID-19 response, the team was awarded its third U.S. Air Force contract for contactless access control through face recognition. Trueface has a robust sales pipeline and has been steadily gaining traction with clients in over 11 countries. We hold two trademarks, two utility patents in computer vision and pending provisional patents. In May of 2019 we raised a seed round of $3.7 million from Lavrock Ventures, Scout Ventures, Advantage Ventures and a few others. The team has been awarded the following accolades: Goodfirms’ Top 10 Face Recognition Companies 2020, COGX London First Place for Innovation in Computer Vision 2020, the 2020 Los Angeles Entrepreneur of the Year Semifinalist, the 10 Most Disruptive Image Recognition Solution Providers in 2020, the 2019 Los Angeles Entrepreneur of the Year Semifinalist, Hot Vendors in Image and Video Analytics 2019 and 40 Under 40 Analytics Insight 2019.

Trueface alert

What solutions/services does your business offer in the security industry? And what makes your offerings/company unique?

SM: Trueface offers three solutions, all of which run entirely on client infrastructure to ensure data privacy:

  • Developer solutions: Trueface offers SDKs and dockerized APIs to empower technical teams to build computer vision capabilities into their own products. One example is the authentication of individuals in physical or digital environments through face recognition as the credential.
  • Access control: Trueface increases environmental security by enabling clients to admit their employees and guests with single- or multi-factor contactless identity verification. In addition to access control, this solution can be used for timekeeping purposes to ensure a proper audit trail of individuals entering and leaving a facility.  
  • Biosecurity: Trueface equips businesses to reopen, remain open and rebuild customer confidence by enabling frictionless temperature and mask detection, density and social distance monitoring. 

Trueface’s clients have deployed these solutions to power applications such as multi-factor authentication for access control, automated age verification in casinos, object detection and face recognition for automated CCTV monitoring and more. We are driven by our mission to deliver computer vision solutions that benefit all of society. The company amassed data from around the world, creating proprietary balanced training data that aims to achieve equal performance across all ethnicities and gender.  Trueface is one of the only companies to publish its ethnicity and bias reports and is driving industry accountability by encouraging the rest to do the same. Additionally, one our first-ever National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) submissions placed in the top 10 globally for genuine match speed.

Trueface facial recognition

What is something we might not know about your company – or something new you are doing in security?

SM:We are building a product that enables extending face recognition to everyday processes and objects and solves some of the biggest privacy and data security issues that plague the technology. We will be announcing this solution very soon. The solution creates an identity verification process that is user-initiated (it can’t identify you before you initiate an interaction, thereby enforcing consent), holds no data (your face template is communicated during the interaction), ensures data integrity and authenticity and needs no special hardware (works retrospectively with existing hardware).

What is your company’s vision, and what are your goals for the security industry?

SM:Trueface unequivocally believes that the only way we can live in a safer and smarter world is through the responsible use of computer vision. The company is living this vision and continues to hold the industry accountable by addressing concerns head on and publicly sharing our plans to mitigate risk.

Trueface facial recognition on a screen

What do you think are the biggest opportunities in the security industry right now?

SM:We believe that our biggest opportunity is within access control. As the world shifts into a phobia of touching common surfaces, we believe we are well positioned to help drive comfort and confidence through touchless/contactless solutions.

What does SIA offer that is most important to you/your company? And what do you most hope to get out of your membership with SIA?

SM: We are very excited about the opportunity to be part of SIA and the discussion around the responsible use of face recognition. We hope to network with partners and help drive transparency in the limitations and benefits of face recognition. 

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association.