Facebook opens Paris Artificial Intelligence lab

PARIS, June 3 (UPI) -- California-based Facebook Inc. opened its third artificial intelligence research center Wednesday in Paris.

The company has invested heavily since 2013 in facial recognition, language processing and speech recognition to examine the billions of text messages, photos and videos in its service. Yann LeCun, Facebook head of artificial intelligence (AI) research, said, "It will create opportunities for researchers in France and create an ecosystem around Facebook, where startups will work on similar topics."

Facebook uses AI for image tags, facial recognition and prediction of trending topics. The Paris laboratory joins Facebook's other AI teams in Menlo Park, Calif. and New York. Each site will eventually have 40 to 50 people, and will work in image processing, text analysis, speech recognition and real-time strategy games.

"It's our hope that this research will ultimately help us make services like News Feed, photos and search even better and enable an entirely new set of ways to connect and share," a company statement said Wednesday.

The company is the focus of European regulators who are examining how it collects and handles data of its 1.4 billion worldwide users. Authorities in France, Belgium and Germany are investigating whether it violated national privacy policies.