Biometrics startup ID R&D released IDLive Face this week. The new solution adds liveness detection to facial recognition technology in an entirely passive manner.

Facial recognition technology has been used in fintech and other verticals to authenticate users for years. And in order to prove that the user wasn’t spoofing their identity using a static photo, many technologies use liveness detection, which requires the user to perform a handful of actions such as blinking, smiling, and turning their head.

With IDLive Face, however, the liveness detection is invisible to the user since it runs in the background of the application. This not only makes a frictionless user experience, it also prevents fraudsters from learning how to spoof the technology.

“IDLive Face requires absolutely no actions from the end user,” said ID R&D CEO Alexey Khitrov. “Eliminating complexity in the user experience is one of the primary focus areas of our research… Armed with excellent real-world results, we are thrilled to offer businesses fully frictionless authentication that aligns with rigorous compliance requirements for onboarding and data management.”

The new technology leverages AI-based algorithms that process images in near real-time. IDLive Face doesn’t require the end user to have any special capture software and is available as an SDK and Docker container on Linux and Windows.

At FinovateFall 2018, Khitrov demoed SafeChat2.0, an application that passively verifies a user’s identity throughout the conversation (typing or speaking) without asking them to do anything special to authenticate themselves.

ID R&D offers authentication technologies that span the biometric spectrum. The company’s IDVoice is a standalone version of its core voice biometric capability,IDSquared is a tool that validates the user by capturing their face as they type their login credentials, and IDBehave is a behavioral biometrics solution that creates a unique biometric template for each user.