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Racist Facial Recognition Software
An anonymous reader writes "A black man found that his HP facial-tracking recognition software wouldn't work. Then he discovered it worked fine for a white co-worker. From the article: 'HP's Tony Welch thanked Desi and Wanda, the video's creators, and promised that he and the team at HP were looking into why the camera was behaving the way it was. "The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose," he said. "We believe that the camera might have difficulty 'seeing' contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting."'"
When the robot wars come, then we'll see who's laughing...
Luckily, a similar situation was addressed and resolved in a Better off Ted episode.
The recognition software is looking for contrast spots, such as shadow from the nose, eye-sockets, and ultimately the head shape, if these criteria isn't met - then it has a problem.
It's the same with eg. Sony PS3's Playstation EYE - and eg. the new game EYEPET, you try that on at home against a dark floor, dark carpet, no matter how much light you put on, the pet won't react to you.
Same with me - I'm a white guy, and unfortunately my floor is sorta white colored (wood, flesh like...if you're slightly yellow in the skin, don't worry - bad indoor light WILL look pale yellowish) ;)
Even with 200 watts of lighting - I had problems with my EYEPET and PS camera, it's virtually useless and incredibly annoying.
Trust me buddy, there's no difference with HP's camera software, the same stuff. Wait until MicroSofts Project NATAL comes out, then you're going to be pleased, it will reckognize ALL colors! Because it has an extra infrared camera!
You're kind of funny though ;) You have a talent for talking on tv, not everybody have that gift, you do!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I have worked with Viola-Jones before - it is extremely robust to lighting conditions. However what it is not robust to is angular changes (twisting of face sideways). It is possible that HP are using some kind of naiive algorithm to achieve face tracking, an easy one for e.g. is simple edge analysis for eye recognition (easier if you have a infrared emitter - to exploit the red eye effect) and then using this extrapolate facial dimensions then to facilitate tracking. It is possible they use Viola-Jones for the initial stage to locate the face region and then begin tracking, so even though the VJ tracker is very good, the processing further in the chain isn't so robust. Part of the reason for doing this might be that the VJ tracker is expensive in terms of compute cycles.
SOMEBODY developed this facial tracking software, and HP vetted it for installation on thousands or millions of computers.
Either this problem will come as a complete surprise to them, or they knew about it and released it anyway. Both alternatives are pretty upsetting.
Because either there were no test cases involving black people -- for an algorithm that depends on skin contrast, you'd think this would be a no-brainer -- or they knew there was a problem, but never expected black people to buy it.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.