Facebook is directly tackling complaints about its facial recognition practices for photo tagging. It's expanding access to its Face Recognition privacy setting (introduced in 2017) to all users, and will stop scanning faces by default. Those who d...
Reports have swirled for days of Google paying people $5 in gift certificates to scan their faces, and now it's clear just why: it's for the Pixel 4. Google has confirmed to The Verge that the paid scans were meant to improve the accuracy of the Pix...
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A bipartisan group of lawmakers is calling for regulations to restrict the use of facial recognition technology before "it gets out of control," according to the Washington Post. Members of the Congressional House Oversight and Reform Committee held...
San Francisco is following through on talk of banning facial recognition tech. The city's Board of Supervisors has voted 8-1 in favor of a bill, the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance, that bans city government (including police) from using facial r...
Does it sound too good to be true? Well, yes and no. See, Jenkins and Kerr used a 39MP Hasselblad H2D camera and ample lighting for their study. Their “bystanders” were also positioned optimally in front of the subject.
On the other hand, the extracted reflected faces were only an incredibly small part of the high resolution portraits they took, yet they were still identifiable. Jenkins and Kerr’s highest resolution photo was 5,412 pixels wide by 7,216 pixels high, but the reflected faces they extracted were only around 27 to 36 pixels wide by 42 to 56 pixels high.
These reflections were then blown up to about 400 pixels high and cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop before being shown to observers for identification.
The results? Observers who didn’t know the reflected persons rated 71% accurate in matching those reflections with clear photographs. The observers who knew the reflected person guessed with 84% accuracy. That’s 8 out of 10 times from a dot in someone’s eye.
Jenkins and Kerr were surprised at their results and came up with two conclusions. First, at the pace of camera technology this method could indeed be practical someday. Second, humans are awesome at identifying faces.
The two also think it could be possible to create a 3D model of the scene in front of the subject using the reflections from both of the subject’s eyes. Now that’s Batman territory. Head to PLOS ONE to read Jenkins and Kerr’s paper.
Google Glass apps have come a long way since Mountain View’s wearable was first shown to the world. The one developed by Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits can tell the mood of the person you’re talking to, and can provide an estimation of his or her age.
The SHORE app created by Fraunhover IIS is not exactly the first of its kind, despite the claim that it’s “world’s first emotion detection app on Google Glass,” as Emotient’s Glassware that was unveiled a few months ago served a very similar purpose. However, it would be wrong to claim that Fraunhofer IIS stole the idea, as most probably the apps were developed in parallel by their respective creators. On top of that, SHORE has a bit of extra functionality, as it does more than just recognizing if your interlocutor is angry, sad, happy, or surprised.
SHORE is able to discern men from women, and can provide an estimation for their age. The results are not exactly precise, neither when it comes to the mood of the person you’re speaking to (ever heard of fake smiles?), nor when guessing the age, as this value is provided more as a range than an exact number.
The team of researchers that developed this app pointed out that “This opens up an entire spectrum of new smart eyewear applications, including communication aids for people with disorders such as autism, many of whom have difficulty interpreting emotions through facial expressions. By taking advantage of the additional capability to determine someone’s gender or estimate their age, the software could be used in other applications such as interactive games or market research analyses.”
“The foundation of the versatile solution lies in our extensive experience with detection and analysis technologies and a large database for machine learning,” claim the researchers. “The technology is ‘trained’ by accessing a database of more than 10,000 annotated faces. In combination with the structure-based features and learning algorithms, we can train so-called models that boast extremely high recognition rates.”
Needless to say, normal people wouldn’t probably need such an app, as their social skills would help them identify quite easily the mood of their interlocutor. Still, sufferers of Aspergers syndrome or Autism, who have a hard time reading social situations, would benefit a lot from using the SHORE app.
When Google launched Shelfies (Shareable Selfies) for Gmail, the search giant was quite sure that “selfie” will be the word of the year. iStrategyLabs must think the same, since they created a magic mirror that takes pictures of you and posts them to Twitter automatically.
According to iStrategyLabs, SELFIE is now an acronym that stands for Self Enhancing Live Feed Image Engine, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this company decided to name their mirror cabinet like that. The very definition of the word selfie includes references to social media, so it only makes sense that a mirror that helps you take selfies posts them to a social network automatically. Of course, some people might be concerned of what happens if pictures of them in indecent postures get posted on the Web, but fortunately the manufacturer has taken care of that aspect, as well.
The two-way mirror hides behind it a Mac mini, an Arduino microcontroller and a webcam. The latter is responsible with capturing the image, while the first two do the facial recognition part and share the image to Twitter.
CMO of iStrategyLabs DJ Saul explained how this product came to be: “We started thinking about how we could create a seamless and fun experience, where the trigger would be nothing more that a smile. The SELFIE mirror helps to demonstrate what’s possible by bringing together hardware, software and a great idea.”
In an interview with Gizmag, iStrategy Director of Ops, Zach Saale pointed out that “The Mac mini uses the OpenCV facial recognition library to detect smiles, and when one is detected a serial command is sent to the Arduino to initiate the countdown sequence. It takes roughly one and a half seconds for a smile to be recognized, as we found any less than that would create false-positives.”
That one and a half second needed before taking a picture can literally save reputations, as otherwise a lot of embarrassing photos would be shot and posted directly to social media. All in all, the product is great for whoever enjoys taking selfies, even though DJ Saul admitted that “I wouldn’t say we’re an advocate, but it’s certainly a fascinating social phenomenon.”
With such a name for their product, iStrategyLabs might as well welcome lawsuits, as there is already a Selfie Mirror in the shape of a photo booth developed by Smashbox Cosmetics that is equipped with a Canon DSLR and a DNP RX1 printer.
A few years ago I attended an annual conference of Balkan political leaders. Middle-aged men filled the room. In the back a younger woman who could certainly have adorned the cover of a fashion...
Have you noticed that Facebook is getting better at making suggestions for people to tag in the photos that you have uploaded? Facebook will only get better at identifying faces thanks to advances in...
Facebook is directly tackling complaints about its facial recognition practices for photo tagging. It's expanding access to its Face Recognition privacy setting (introduced in 2017) to all users, and will stop scanning faces by default. Those who d...
Reports have swirled for days of Google paying people $5 in gift certificates to scan their faces, and now it's clear just why: it's for the Pixel 4. Google has confirmed to The Verge that the paid scans were meant to improve the accuracy of the Pix...
Google is once again validating rumors about the Pixel 4, this time for its touch-free control. The company has confirmed that its next flagship phones will include motion-sensing Soli radar that lets you skip tracks, silence phone calls and otherwis...
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is calling for regulations to restrict the use of facial recognition technology before "it gets out of control," according to the Washington Post. Members of the Congressional House Oversight and Reform Committee held...
San Francisco is following through on talk of banning facial recognition tech. The city's Board of Supervisors has voted 8-1 in favor of a bill, the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance, that bans city government (including police) from using facial r...
