Facial recognition technology is currently being used in our everyday lives, such as when we upload photos onto social media like Facebook where it will then suggest you tag friends based on who the software detects are in the photos. However has facial recognition advanced to the point where it can identify what kind of person you are?
According to an Israeli startup called Faception, they claim to have developed a piece of software that can identify the kind of person you are. For example in one of their tests, the software managed to accurately identify 9 of the 11 attackers involved in the recent attacks on Paris. This is based on an input of sample images from people from various walks of life.
They also conducted a test in which the software scanned a large database of photos to try and search for 27 poker players, in which it accurately found 25 of them. It also went on to identify four of the seven players who made it to the final table in a poker tournament. How this works is that the company attaches “classifiers” to groups, which are a set of facial features that is consistent with certain types of personality traits.
According to the company, “We encode facial appearances in proprietary image descriptors and train state of the art machine learning algorithms to predict personal traits, capabilities and online behaviors.” It’s an interesting idea, although we have to wonder if this could result in accusations of stereotyping.
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