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Picasa Rolls Out 3.0 — Now With Facial Recognition

eldavojohn writes "If you use Picasa (Google's photo sharing site), they have upgraded to 3.0 and are purportedly offering facial recognition. That's right, why tag photos of your friends when the software will group similar faces together for you? There's a new list of features including repairing old photographs by touching them up and even writing on your images. As expected, not everyone is 'ok' with Google automatically recognizing you in pictures."

12 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Families by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Considering that members of a family typically bear a very strong resemblance to one another (with identical twins being the extreme case), I would think this would be one of the tougher trials for a facial recognition algorithm.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Families by pnutjam · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It seemed to be very confused by my wife and daughters. Even some of her relatives showed up.

  2. If you don't like Google doing it you won't like.. by megamerican · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has been spending millions and possibly billions on face recognizing cameras for cities around the nation.

    It wouldn't be too difficult for the DHS to take the information from google and incorporate it in their own databases.

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    If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
  3. I'm confused... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How is this not a violation of basic data protection laws in numerous jurisdictions (like, say, pretty much all of Europe)?

    This is the curse of social networking sites generally: you don't have to be the person providing personal information about yourself, because chances are your well-meaning friends will do it for you.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    1. Re:I'm confused... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Strawman, much?

      Most of the civilised world has basic privacy protections. If the US doesn't, then in the age of the Internet, the US needs to be penalised by everyone else until it does. This is no different to the way the US itself leans on other nations to protect its own interests. Related things are already happening, with increasing numbers of European businesses explicitly forbidding service providers from storing data in or routing data via the US because of legal and regulatory concerns.

      Either this sort of harmonisation with basic rights protected by worldwide law happens, or sooner or later the Internet probably becomes fragmented into more localised parts with more consistent legal environments. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, IMHO: just like any other international agreements, if you want to play with the others, you have to play nice.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  4. Please bring out Mac support by asmitty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This was one of my favorite programs when I was on Windows, and I miss its use on my mac. I enjoy iPhoto, but Picasa just had so many features that I loved and used and find so much better than iPhoto. Things like watching folders to see when new pictures were added, moved, and deleted. Cmon google...

  5. God I hope this works... by R2.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My wife is:
    1) a shutterbug
    2) a packrat
    3) totally disorganized

    the ability to type in "find R3.0" and have it come up with all the pics of my son would make my life a lot easier.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  6. Re:Google Earth integration. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Remember that time,,,,? Did anyone take pics? If there was any pics, did someone post them on the internet? Maybe your boss will let you know,,,,maybe the police will,,,maybe your parent(s) will,,,maybe your wife ( or her lawyer ) will,,,

    How does that old ethics line go: "it is not whether or not we can, but whether or not we should"? Double application here?

  7. So true (yes, this is a 'me too' post) by Animaether · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was watching a Dr. Phil show by chance about a week back that dealt with some girls posting questionable pictures of themselves (not naked, just.. plastered) on their Facebook/whatever, and discussing how that might impact their (future) lives - with one employer type guy saying that he will check you out on the internet and if he were to find stuff like that, not consider you for a job.

    So Dr. Phil and some 'expert' went on to say that posting pictures like that is not good, blablabla; the same stuff parents would tell their children, I guess.

    But what Anonymous Brave Guy mentioned was not even touched upon in the program; yes, it's stupid if you publish those pictures yourself, but what are you gonna do if somebody -else- posts those pictures?
    Yes, you can ask them to take them down... maybe they will, maybe they won't.. in the latter case you might ask Facebook.. who may take them down, or not.. in the latter case you might have to sue, etc. But even if your friend does take them down... a friend of theirs may have already copied it to -their- facebook page. In no time, it can be in a hundred random places on the internet... and that employer-type guy is going to find it and not hire you. So what are you going to do against that? Check if anybody's taking pictures while you're plastered? Good luck doing that when every cellphone has a camera these days. Only get plastered while in a private setting? Most of these pictures -are- from private parties.

    I guess the answer is "don't get plastered". Sadly, that means "Don't do anything whatsoever that, while innocuous, may be interpreted in such a way by other people as to form a negative opinion of you either personally or professionally". A boring life that'll be.

    Back to the topic at hand; protecting your own privacy is all good and well, but in the end, if others are allowed to talk about you in the forum of a billion people that is the internet, you're bound to be screwed one way or another.

  8. Re:It recognizes *faces* by R2.0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Guess we need to drop all of the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories from the Oscars. Let the men and woman both fight it our for the single Best Actor award...:

    What would be wrong with that? Shorten the damned ceremony up a bit.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  9. they read my post to /. by sckeener · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think they read my post...
    I made a comment to this article about "Computer Scientists Scour Your Holiday Photos"
    http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/18/1323224

    and here's my post:

    http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=587635&cid=23843099

    Google should get behind this. I think their Picasa would benefit from it.

    Generate some autotags.

    What would be nice also is if they had a feature where if you labeled someone in a picture, if you uploaded another picture with that person in the picture, the program would prompt to auto tag.

    I've been going through old family photos and it would save so much time if the programs I am using autolabeled based off details in the picture.

    --
    "Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
  10. Re:Google Earth integration. by jackbird · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was under the impression that there was precedent such that codecs that don't write every frame (i.e. not MJPEG) weren't admissible. It came up in a discussion about why so many web-enabled security cameras speak MJPEG. Any lawyers/law students able to shed light on the discrepancy?