In an era when artificial intelligence (AI) is rewriting the technology conversation, the trailblazers who embraced this cutting-edge innovation more than a decade before its ubiquity are continuing to “evolve and impact the AI landscape.”
Banjo, a startup founded in 2010, was ahead of its time, using AI to transform real-time event detection and predictive analysis long before these technologies became mainstream. Now calling itself SafeXai, the company continues to evolve and impact the AI industry.
Banjo pioneered the concept of event detection engine, by using geo-tagged social media content to provide real-time situational awareness.
“When you log into the Banjo interface, you can see trending events around you based on geo-location. This information is user curated... No major news outlets, not propaganda. Just pure news,” Christopher Dessi, a tech industry and AI expert said in a 2015 LinkedIn post.
According to TechCrunch in 2015, Banjo’s integration of AI and machine learning was pivotal, as the company leveraged these technologies for linguistic analysis, topic analysis, geo-data analysis and visual content classification.
It allowed the platform to scan photos and videos uploaded by witnesses and “more quickly identify important information in the images than human investigators.”
Banjo’s applications spanned various sectors, including public safety, news reporting, and marketing. Its ability to combine real-time data from social media, traffic cameras and emergency call centers, enabled it to predict significant events before they were widely known and provided state governments and news organizations with unprecedented situational awareness.
Damien Patton, Banjo’s founder, told TechCrunch in 2014, “We look at all these social signals in real-time…now we’re able to curate and index breaking news and events faster than anyone else.”
A prime example of Banjo’s ability to monitor situations in real-time was the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013, where it “provided immediate situational awareness, helping to identify people of interest within minutes of the incident.”
This demonstration of Banjo’s abilities led it to be the driving force in curating social content for major networks like NBC, FOX and BBC, predicting events before they surfaced on other platforms and organizing real-time social signals by time, location and context.
Despite being compared to tech giants like Google, IBM Watson, Facebook and Amazon, Banjo set itself apart through real-time event detection – as opposed to the AI applications of those same giants, which were broader and less focused on immediate event prediction.
In 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported Banjo’s advanced capability to classify and analyze millions of images from social media and other sources in real-time led to its $100 million Series C funding led by SoftBank.
Banjo’s early innovations were the trendsetter for modern AI applications, displaying their technology’s practical value and impact through securing significant funding, to forming partnerships with state governments and media organizations.
In 2021, Banjo rebranded as SafeXai, continuing to focus on real-time data integration and predictive analysis, while also addressing broader safety and security challenges.