Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Recognizable features

The Register writes about researchers who claim to have a system for automatic face recognition with much higher accuracy than other existing systems. You know, the kind of system paranoid people think are connected to CCTV systems in public places to track people.

How does this system work then? To avoid being distracted by changed hairstyles, different facial expressions, and so on, one must provide several images of the subject ranging over different looks. It then uses an average of the provided pictures to find the features that are constant and unique to the subject.

Phew, that means that only celebrities who are frequent paparazzi targets are in risk of being tracked by public CCTV cameras. Unless someone decides to grab tagged faces from pictures on Facebook. Hmmm, mabye I should start writing that add-on to show me the location of all my friends on Google maps...

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the tip.