Facial recognition tech booms despite accuracy concerns. Police arrests surge while airports and restaurants trial facial payments and passport-free travel.

A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.

  • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.netEnglish
    8·
    5 months ago

    I think from a purely technical point of view, you’re not going to get FaceID kind of accuracy on theft prevention systems. Primarily because FaceID uses IR array scanning within arm’s reach from the user, whereas theft prevention is usually scanned from much further away. The distance makes it much harder to get the fidelity of data required for an accurate reading.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      Yup, it turns out if you have millions of pixels to work with, you have a better shot at correctly identifying someone than if you have dozens.

    • CeeBee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I think from a purely technical point of view, you’re not going to get FaceID kind of accuracy on theft prevention systems. Primarily because FaceID uses IR array scanning within arm’s reach from the user, whereas theft prevention is usually scanned from much further away. The distance makes it much harder to get the fidelity of data required for an accurate reading.

      This is true. The distance definitely makes a difference, but there are systems out there that get incredibly high accuracy even with surveillance footage.