Google said on Monday that it had agreed to buy British artificial intelligence start-up company DeepMind for an undisclosed amount.

"I can confirm that the acquisition has indeed gone ahead but unfortunately we are not commenting beyond that for now," a Google spokeswoman told AFP.

Reports put the deal at between $400 million and $500 million (292-365 million euros).

On its one-page website, DeepMind describes itself as "a cutting edge artificial intelligence company" which combines "the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms".

Artificial intelligence can help computers "think" in ways similar to the way humans think and help solve problems.

Last year, Facebook unveiled a partnership with New York University for a new centre for artificial intelligence, aimed at harnessing the social network's massive trove of data.