Icelandic software company Videntifier has signed a major contract with Facebook for use of the visual search engine software that the company has spent the last decade developing.

Videntifier’s technology gives computers the ability to recognize complex visual information—both stills and moving images—no matter the format or whether the image has gone through modifications. Interpol is currently Videntifier’s largest client and indeed, most of the company’s current clients are involved in law enforcement and security in some way or another. These organizations have used Videntifier’s software to identify illegal visual images, as well as to enforce copyright claims.

The visual search engine technology was developed by Videntifier’s founders Herwig Lejsek and Friðrik Ásmundsson in collaboration with University of Reykjavík professor Björn Þór Jónsson and others.

The agreement was announced in a statement issued by Lejesk, now Videntifier’s CEO. “It has always been our goal that the technology be both fast and accurate so that it correctly identifies images and can handle extremely large projects. The fact that the biggest social media company is using it demonstrates that we’ve been successful,” he wrote.

Ari Kristinn Jónsson, a professor at the University of Reykjavík who is also the Chairman of Videntifier’s board, also contributed to the statement, lauding the contract as a manjor milestone in the company’s development. He also celebrated it as evidence of Iceland’s thriving tech industry. “This is also a good example of how much opportunity and value can be created on the foundations of ingenuity here in Iceland, and in the future, it will be hugely important to Iceland to have human resources and an environment that delivers such milestones much more often.”

This article was also published in http://icelandreview.com/news/2018/05/03/facebook-buys-software-icelandic-tech-company