Micro 4/3 Time passes so quickly (I now take facial recognition for granted)

[Luke]

I remember the first time I had a camera that recognized faces I thought it was positively eerie. It's only been a few years since that first wave of awe passed me by, but now I don't even think twice when I'm busy snapping photos of albums to sell online and the camera recognizes Pierre Monteux's smiling visage peering into the lens.

IMG_20171102_143151 by Luke, on Flickr

 

[Richard]

I had this experience when copying a group picture originally taken at my grandparents' wedding with my own modern camera a few days ago. It was quite an odd feeling when the camera picked up all those 100-year-old faces and I could hear myself saying, 'Now everybody smile ...'

Another unexpected face recognition moment happened recently when I was idly looking around the Mount Rushmore area of South Dakota with Google Streetview. I'd just been reading about the building of the famous monument and wondered what it looks like from the local roads. And guess what ... on many of the Streetview images the face recognition algorithm at Google has spotted the faces of the four presidents up on the side of the mountain and dutifully smudged them out to preserve their anonymity. It turns out that the software is fallible and depending where you place the camera around the area, different presidents are concealed and revealed in turn. Try it yourselves if you have nothing better to do for ten minutes.

-R

 

[john m flores]

Or when Apple Photos asks me if my nephew is my brother (his son), or if this child has in this 40 year old photo is me and is rIght.

 

[tilman]

I'll be impressed once cameras start tagging faces with names (facebook-style), all the while you're composing the image...
(Maybe 'impressed' is the wrong word... 'concerned' might be better... Smartphones will get there soon enough, and surveillance systems are probably there already - to some degree...)

Good job on recognising the guy with the mustache though

 

[Luke]

I don't know if it's good news or bad news for you, Tilman. But I think given enough processing power, the Apples and Bookfaces could easily tag ALL of in REAL time....even me...and I'm not Facebook.

I guarantee it.

 

[tilman]

True. Well, the good news is we'll never have to remember anybody's names anymore. (Those will be super-imposed on our smart-glasses)
More brain capacity left over to spend on 'angry birds'...

Feeling even older now... with my 5MP Olympus E1... :-D

 

[Lawrence A.]

Facebook. Hmmm. It consistently mis-identifies a skinny 22 year old Lao man I know for an overweight, 72 year old White guy I also know, and has recently started identifying me as someone I have not seen in almost 30 decades and who looks nothing like me -- except we both look Boston Irish. It scares me that law enforcement is using this technology to pursue -- who knows? The failure rate for this stuff is too high to be used for anything but consumer convenience (if you can put up with the errors) and entertainment. I do like like that it recognized the great Pierre Monteux.