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.

  • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Why, because all shoplifters are black? I don’t understand. She’s being mistaken for another person, a real person on the system.

    I used to know a smackhead that would steal things to order, I wonder if he’s still alive and whether he’s on this database. Never bought anything off him but I did buy him a drink occasionally. He’d had a bit of a difficult childhood.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 months ago

      i think its more that all facial recognition systems have a harder time picking up faces with darker complexion (same idea why phone cameras are bad at it for example). this failure leads to a bunch of false flags. its hilariously evident when you see police jurisdictions using it and aresting innocent people.

      not saying the womans of colored background, but would explain why it might be triggering.

    • erwan@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Because the algorithm trying to identify shoplifters is probably trained on biased dataset

      • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        That’s not how it works! It has mistakenly identified her as a specific individual who was already convicted of theft.