Computing

Face Recognition: Clever or Just Plain Creepy?

(Page 3 of 3)

  • Friday, February 27, 2009
  • By Simson Garfinkel and Beth Rosenberg

Since we installed iPhoto '09, our family has spent hours sitting around the computer, searching for photos of the kids, and teaching the computer what each of us looks like. We found a lot of old photos we had forgotten. We laugh at the mismatches. We try to understand the algorithms. This is one of the most entertaining programs that Apple has ever created.

Google's Picasa technology is far creepier. Instead of starting with a photo of someone you know and searching for all the similar matches, Google takes every photo that you've uploaded to Picasa, searches them all for faces, then "clusters"these faces into groups of, supposedly, the same people. You then go through each group and tell Google who a person is--including his or her full name, nickname, and e-mail address.

In fact, Google's clustering isn't all that great. It frequently puts different people in the same cluster, and it will make lots of different clusters for the same person. And unlike iPhoto, which could easily match photos of our 12-year-old daughter with her photos as a toddler, Google thought that the children were different people. But Google's user interface is pretty easy to employ, the matching task is strangely compelling, and before you know it, you'll have every one of your photos tagged with all the real names and e-mail addresses of each person that the photo features.

This real-name tagging is what makes Google's face recognition so creepy. Remember, all these photos aren't on your computer: they're on Google's server. And because e-mail addresses are unique, Google could use the tagged photos from all its Picasa users to create a global database matching photos to e-mail addresses. Doing so would not even violate Google's privacy policy, so long as Google only uses this information to make its service "better" and does not make the database generally available.

But what's really unsettling about Google's service is that it doesn't just stop at your friends. Before you know it, Google is asking you to identify all those other faces in your photographs--the people standing in the background, the faces in the crowds, even the faces on posters. This is certainly keeping with Google's corporate mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But is that what we really want from a photo-sharing website?

Our iPhoto experiences have been a delight: we've been excited and pleased to find so many pictures of our kids, family, and friends--and even ourselves. On the other hand, when we used the advanced tagging feature in Google's Picasa, we felt as though we were intelligence analysts working in the windowless lab of some totalitarian government.

We believe that consumer-driven face-recognition technology will fundamentally change public-policy debates about biometrics and mass video surveillance. After September 11, nobody really understood how this technology worked, what it got right, and what it got wrong. But before the end of this year, millions of Americans will have first-hand experience with some of the very best face-recognition systems ever deployed. Once the family-photo novelty wears off, we'll be watching to see if iPhoto and Picasa users ask their government to regulate this technology--or accelerate its deployment.

Print

Related Articles

When You're Always a Familiar Face

A startup wants any Web page or mobile app to recognize faces, and claims users are becoming less sensitive about the technology.

Augmented Identity

A new app makes it possible to identify people and learn about them just by pointing your phone.

A Face-Finding Search Engine

A new approach to face recognition is better at handling low-resolution video.

Close Comments

To comment, please sign in or register

Forgot my password

hartman_john

3 Comments

  • 1081 Days Ago
  • 02/27/2009

face recognition

This smacks so hard of Big Brother and yet it appears to be Big No Bother to most. The authorities will soon know your every move and then where will we be?
A little paranoia is a good thing, people.
The term "Freedom isn't free," long touted by the Right Wing neo-Nazis, will soon be "your freedom is being monitored by your government."
I, for one, think the whole concept is awful, anti-freedom and anti-individual. You can take I-Photo and the others and cram them where the sun don't shine.

Reply

TooMany

125 Comments

  • 1080 Days Ago
  • 02/28/2009

Re: face recognition

Therefore we must monitor our government.

Reply

hartman_john

3 Comments

  • 1078 Days Ago
  • 03/02/2009

Face Recognition

What is the fascination with spreading your thoughts, your image, your self all over the globe.  Face Recognition is just one more example of the way we think of ourselves - as being significant or important enough that others will want to know everything about us.
The level of vanity and the pompousness is stunning.  Your life, my life, most lives are simply not interesting enough to merit this kind of attention.  Your Twittering, your Instant Messaging, your voice-mailing, your obsession with yourself is mostly annoying and wastes precious time and energy.
Please stop now.
Thank you!

Reply

Patricia645

1 Comment

  • 236 Days Ago
  • 06/22/2011

Face recognition

Face recognition is also helpful in sport arenas during matches. Colosseo enterprise arena system ensures security which is maintained by a flexible identification system where event organizers can control the whole area and identify the cause of the conflict or incident. For more information check www.colosseoeas.com

Reply

Advertisement

MAGAZINE

Can We Build Tomorrow's Breakthroughs?

Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.

Sponsored Content

Technologies from National Instruments

Adding Data Logging
Log measured data to a file and open it in Microsoft Excel

> Click here for more National Instruments Videos <
Whitepaper

Temperature Measurements with Thermocouples: How-To Guide

This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.

View full PDF > Listen to story >
Find us on Youtube

Videos

A Robot Recruit that Can Do It All

More

Advertisement

Technology Review Lists

TR50

Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:

Toyota

Novomer

Serious Materials

Roche

More

Advertisement

Facebook

Advertisement