20 or more years ago, many Sci-Fi movies and television shows featured some version of facial recognition. For instance, you might see a spaceship captain or CEO verify their identities through a facial scanning device. All of that seemed glorious and exciting, making viewers wonder when the technology would come to the mainstream. Well, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is making it a reality for their mass of users.
Although multiple forms of facial recognition are already used by law enforcement and other entities, Facebook takes it to a heightened level. To illustrate Facebook’s commitment, they purchased facial recognition company Face.com for $80 million in 2012. Facebook claimed the “next steps are going to be exciting for all of us.” Now, Facebook’s AI (artificial intelligence) team has created what they call “Deepface.”
Deepface uses nine layers of a deep neural network. It can pick up patterns it learned from looking at 4 million photos of over 4,000 people. It utilizes “frontalization” to create a front-facing replication from varying image sources. It starts by creating a 3-D model. That model is then transformed to look like a posed image.
Furthermore, the technology can compare multiple image sources to come up with its final output. It is almost as good as humans in identifying facial features. It is so intelligent that is has a 97.25% accuracy, which is not too far below the human accuracy of 97.5%. Right now, Deepface is used solely for academic purposes.
You can manually tag photos on your Facebook page. So, will Deepface have the ability to tag photos for you? If so, will there be a controversy created, especially from those who value their privacy and prefer not to be tagged? Will it be used to spot more online criminals? We will see.
