Posts tagged Recognition
Yandex Adds Face Recognition Technology
Jan 26th
Russian search giant Yandex has added facial recognition technology to its photo hosting service, Yandex.Fotki. Yandex is leveraging Face.com’s facial recognition technology to create a “smart” photo tagging service that lets users tag other people.
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Google+ Promises Its Facial Recognition Tool Isn’t Like Facebook’s
Dec 8th
Today Google+’s photo app launched a new feature called Find My Face, which purports to make tagging photos of you and your friends much easier. Thankfully, this isn’t a super creepy facial recognition tool. Not only is it completely opt-in, which means that Google asks for your permission before turning anything on, but users can decide whether or not they want to make the switch using Google+ settings. Matt Steiner, the engineering lead on the Google+ Photos Team, made the announcement today on Google+. Find My Face rolls out over the next few days.
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Facebook launched its facial recognition tool to the world in June of this year. It had already gone live for North American users almost a year prior. Unlike Google+’s Find My Face, Facebook’s facial recognition was opt-out by default. This raised concerns for privacy advocates such as Sophos security blogger Graham Cluley, who wrote an open letter to Facebook regarding user privacy. Will Google+’s respect for users’ privacy help them take the lead in the social network battle?
There’s a big blue button explicitly asking if you want to turn on Find My Face. The language is easy-to-read and isn’t just thrown into the legal jargon-y Terms of Service. If you choose to turn it on, the feature will prompt you like so:
Facebook recently settled with the FTC regarding its privacy issues. Now it must first obtain express consent from users before changing its privacy settings. It will also undergo privacy audits every two years over the next 20 years. The same thing happened to Google’s failed Google Buzz. So you can bet both of the social networks are being extra-careful with its users privacy – or so we hope.
A recent survey of Facebook-using teenagers revealed that perhaps Google+ really will be a viable alternative to Facebook. For now at least, one thing is clear: Google+ is taking far more care with your privacy.
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As Facial Recognition Improves, New Privacy Controversies Await
Oct 7th
If you think recently-unveiled products like the Facebook Timeline and Amazon’s cloud-powered Silk Web browser have raised privacy issues, an innovation that lies just around the corner could blow them both out of the water.
Facial recognition technology has been around for decades, but until recently it’s been slow, inefficient and largely limited to proprietary implementations, such as databases used by law enforcement. That could all be about to change, and the results are bound to send shivers down the spines of digital privacy advocates.
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PittPatt, software developed at Carnegie Mellon University (and now owned by Google), is just one example of software that can quickly identify individuals in a photograph, matching their likeness with other images of them found online and then scouring the Web for other information about the person.
“With Carnegie Mellon’s cloud-centric new mobile app, the process of matching a casual snapshot with a person’s online identity takes less than a minute,” writes Jared Keller in The Atlantic. “Tools like PittPatt and other cloud-based facial recognition services rely on finding publicly available pictures of you online, whether it’s a profile image for social networks like Facebook and Google Plus or from something more official from a company website or a college athletic portrait.”
As incredible as some of the potential uses this technology has may be, the futuristic possibilities are largely overshadowed by the privacy implications raised by the widespread availability of point-and-shoot facial recognition. For every auto-tagged friend and identified criminal, there is inevitably a pervert and a ruthless despot bent on punishing protestors.
Google is well aware of the risks. Even before acquiring PittPatt, it had developed its own powerful facial recognition internally, but has declined to bake it into any publicly-released applications like Google Goggles because of these privacy concerns. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said that the privacy implications raised by facial recognition are “very concerning” and that the company would not likely lead any effort to popularize it in consumer mobile apps. Even so, third party developers haven’t been deterred from working the controversial technology into Android apps.
Apple and Facebook Join the Facial Recognition Game (Carefully)
On Facebook, some users were disturbed when they first saw the social network’s own implementation of facial recognition. Upon uploading an image of friends, Facebook will automatically identify people in the photograph and ask users if they’d like to tag them accordingly. The feature, which was made available globally this summer, allows users to opt out via their privacy settings.
Apple made clear that it intends to let the iPhone recognizes faces one way or another when it acquired a company called Polar Rose in 2010. While it has declined to integrate the technology into iOS directly, Apple has made facial recognition features available to developers in new APIs for iOS 5. On example of how this might be used is RecognizeMe, an app for jailbroken iPhones that unlocks the device by scanning and recognizing the owner’s face.
Just because titans like Google and Apple have declined to roll mobile facial recognition out in a way that would allow the technology to be easily abused, that doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. As long as the tech exists and continues to improve, it may only be a matter of time before it’s available on a smartphone near you.
What do you think about mobile facial recognition? Creepy or cutting edge? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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Facial Recognition Comes to iOS 5 via New Developer Tools
Jul 27th
All the way back in January, we speculated that Apple would introduce its then recently acquired facial recognition technology into the upcoming iPhone 5. Now, it seems that prediction has come true – and not just for the iPhone 5, but for any iPhone capable of upgrading to the new mobile operating system iOS 5.
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Developers to Get Access to Facial Detection Tools
The Apple-tracking site 9to5Mac first discovered the new facial detection tools on Apple’s Developer website. According to the blog post, the technology will not be implemented in an Apple-provided mobile application, like its Photo Gallery, for example, but will be offered to mobile developers for use in third-party applications sold in the iTunes App Store.
Specifically, Apple is introducing 5 new iOS 5 APIs (application programming interfaces), which will allow developers to determine things like where a person’s eyes, nose and mouth are located – all things that enable facial detection and facial recognition.
The Polar Rose Connection
The technology that makes this possible comes from a 2010 acquisition of a Swedish company called Polar Rose, which previously designed consumer-facing services that enabled you to automatically tag your Facebook and Flickr photos with your friends’ names. While it’s beyond exciting to think about how this technology can be implemented in the future by Apple’s large developer community, it’s odd to think that Apple itself wouldn’t also include some interesting facial recognition features of its own into its mobile operating system.
For example, 9to5Mac notes that face detection tools are already available on the Mac, so why wouldn’t Apple also provide something similar for your iPhone (or iPod Touch, or iPad) photos? Those name tags could then be synced either manually over USB or via Apple’s new iCloud service to your Mac, where they would be recognized by Apple’s photo management software.
Why Nothing from Apple Itself?
Could it be that Apple is holding back on implementing facial recognition out of fear of a backlash, similar to what Facebook is experiencing now? Facebook added facial recognition for U.S. users last year, and to the world last month, in order to help suggest tags for the faces present in photos users uploaded to the service. But thanks to an overly paranoid user base (probably due to Facebook’s continual mismanagement of user privacy amid an array of confusing settings), privacy advocates insisted on improved opt-out options for this new feature.
Google, too, reportedly has facial recognition technology in development which allows mobile phones to recognize the people seen within the camera’s lens. Supposedly, Google has held back on releasing this technology due to privacy concerns.
If we know Apple, it will let other companies take the brunt of abuse for implementing these “new-fangled” innovations, wait until consumers are more comfortable with the technology, then release an update that radically improves on the overall user experience through ease-of-use and good design.
In the meantime, wouldn’t it be nice to see a simple facial detection device unlock feature like this jailbreak app (below) come to the next iPhone? That wouldn’t be too invasive, we think. What do you think, Apple?
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Facebook Makes It Easier to Opt Out of Facial Recognition Tagging Feature
Jul 26th
Facebook is treading carefully with its facial-recognition “tag suggestion” feature and now is making it easier for users to opt out of the feature according to the state of Connecticut, via Bloomberg. When last we heard from Facebook’s facial recognition feature it had just been opened released as a global feature but remained opt out as opposed to opt in, upsetting many users and privacy advocates across the world.
According to Bloomberg, Connecticut’s attorney general George Jepsen said that Facebook will begin running online ads today that link users to their privacy settings, allowing them to opt out of the service. Have you seen the ads to which Jepsen refers? Have you or will you opt out of the “tag suggestion” feature?
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Facebook does not tag people in photos automatically. It tries to recognize what people are in photos and suggests that users tag them. What upsets privacy advocates and government regulators like Jepsen is that Facebook has been sharing personal information by default. Facebook reportedly gave Jepsen assurances that the facial recognition software was used purely in the suggestion feature and that it was not a way for other users to glean more information from user profiles.
Facebook users upload more than 100 million photos to the platform on a daily basis. A company called Divvyshot and founder Sam Odio were acquired by Facebook to help institute the facial recognition feature. Odio, the product manager for photos, left Facebook in June to create a new company called Freshplum.
Bloomberg also reported that Jepsen responded to problems with impostor accounts, making it easier to report and delete them. Facebook added “new language and links to a contact form to help users trying to report an impostor or fake profile.” Part of Google Plus’s trouble around using real names and not allowing brands on the platform at first had to do with authentication and dealing with potential impostor accounts.
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Google Buys Facial Recognition Company PittPatt
Jul 26th
Google has picked up a facial recognition group known as PittPatt. PittPatt’s technology is likely to be used in Google+, although there are many potential applications.
The PittPatt Acquisition
PittPatt has been around since 2004, when it bec…
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Search Secures Recognition as Local Business Info Provider
Jun 28th
The idea of using search engines as a way to find local business data is fairly new; Google Maps only launched beta six years ago. But according to a recent Burke study, search sites have already become a trusted way to find local business informa…
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Disturbing Michelle Obama Image Makes A Case For Facial Recognition In Google’s New Image Search
Jun 18th
Do you remember that disturbing, Photoshopped image of First Lady Michelle Obama that made big news a couple years ago? It’s hard to find now in Google Image Search unless you know exactly what to type into the search box. Type “michelle obama” and you probably won’t ever…
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Privacy Regulators See Red Over Facebook Facial Recognition
Jun 13th
The long worked on facial recognition technology recently released by Facebook is coming under attack from European Union regulators questioning its intrusion in to users’ privacy.
Facebook gave information to the EU shortly after the investigat…
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Coming To A Bar Near You: Facial Recognition & Real-Time Data
Jun 10th
Facial recognition and detection software is a hot button issue on the web right now. Facebook has stirred a hornets nest by using facial recognition with users pictures, prompting people to tag their friends that Facebook has recognized. Google has said that is a line of creepy it will not cross.
Facial detection software is not just limited to the web though. A new startup in Chicago called SceneTap uses facial detection and people-counting cameras to scope out your local bar to tell you “what is going on.” What is the male-to-female ratio at your favorite club? Who is buying drinks? SceneTap cameras see it all and provide the data to users and bar owners. Seem a little creepy? Maybe not as much as you might think.
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The stated goal of SceneTap is to give real-time information into your local bar scene. As such, it is a location-based service that gives you information, deals and social media connections, location information and more. It is kind of like Yelp plus Foursquare plus Groupon with Facebook and Twitter integration, operating in real-time.
According to founder and CEO Cole Harper, the cameras used by SceneTap are not meant to be looked at by anyone. There is a demarcation between “facial detection” and “facial recognition” that SceneTap says it does not broach. The way it works is that there is a camera facing the door of the bar. A person comes in and the camera creates a box around the face, analyzing the eyes, nose and facial structure. It takes that data and scans it through a database to find the most similar type of match. Are you a 25-year-old female? That is what the SceneTap camera is trying to find out.
The cameras are not monitored by people and information is not stored. Bar owners do not have access to the feeds as the stream is encrypted from the backend. SceneTap does technically have access to the visual feed but Harper says that it would only be used for maintenance.
Big Data for Bar Owners for the First Time
The value proposition for bar goers and bar owners is significant. Fundamentally, SceneTap is trying to bring big data on a granular level to the restaurant industry. It analyzes what type of people are coming in, what they are buying and when they come and go. That information can be cross-referenced with promotions, advertisements and on-site staff (does Bartender A bring in more male patrons than Bartender B, for instance).
This is not the type of information that restaurants and bars have ever had access. Even with the most sophisticated point-of-sale systems, the ability to have specific gender-related data on a timeline that can be studied over a period of time is not available. Yet, add SceneTap data with the POS system and all of a sudden restaurant owners know everything about their clientele.
For bar goers, the design is meant to give real-time information to help you decide where you are going. Is Bartender A working? How many girls are there and how old are they?
SceneTap will launch in Chicago in the middle of July and have partners in select cities across the country shortly thereafter including New York, Boston, Miami, Austin, Columbus, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego and Las Vegas.
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