Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing

recoiledsnake writes "This article notes, 'A new technology built into Google Glass, dug up by New Scientist, takes Google Glass from interesting to down right creepy. Google Glass can now pick a person out of crowd based on their fashion style. The system, InSight, developed in partnership with Google, will take a nice little moment to assess the clothing in frame, and then point out exactly where your friends are in busy settings like a bar, concert, or sporting event. It could probably point you out in a protest, or shopping mall too.' We previously discussed the disorienting effects on the wearer of the device."

Comments

so fracking cool

[alen]

first foursquare told me where all my friends are
now google tells me who my friends are and i don't have to look at their face

Google Glass feature that no one is talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great read: http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no-one-is-talking-about/

From the article:

The Google Glass feature that (almost) no one is talking about is the experience – not of the user, but of everyone other than the user. A tweet by David Yee introduces it well:

There is a kid wearing Google Glasses at this restaurant which, until just now, used to be my favorite spot.

Re:Great for avoiding, bad for privacy

[DragonWriter]

On the one hand that's great, especially if there's someone in the crowd you'd rather avoid. On the other hand (and in a more serious light), this is just horrible for privacy.

I really think we need a different word for "people's desire for public interactions to be mostly ephemeral" than "privacy".

I'm not saying its not an increasingly important concern (a fairly novel one raised by the increased ease of recording, analyzing, storing, and indexing information about public interactions), its just not the same thing as the traditional notion of "privacy", because it largely rests in things that are deliberately exposed publicly.

Already can be creeper sorry creepy

[Fencepost]

I've seen a bit of mention of this, but not much.

Anyone remember a furor not too long ago about assorted "creepershot" forums on Reddit? Google Glass will make creepershots trivial - at least now it's (generally) obvious if you're following people around photographing them.

Useful

[The Raven]

This is very useful to me; I often have trouble picking my wife out of a crowd. Mom, who has prosopagnosia (unable to identify faces) will also appreciate it. This kind of task, supplementing human failings, is exactly what we need. Many people don't need it; I'm sure most people will be as good or better than Glass at seeing friends in a crowd. But for those of us who are not? Useful!

I don't need a calculator to figure out which package of rice is the best-per-pound at the supermarket (when it is not labeled clearly), while my wife does. Should I say calculators are useless or stupid, just because I don't need them for that use case?

Does no one actually read the articles?

[tilante]

The article explains that the application works like this: you have to start off by IDing your friend to it. It then analyzes the clothing they're wearing and their dimensions. When you want to look for them, it scans for a match, and picks out the person (or what could potentially be the person) for you.

The article goes on to mention a couple of reasons that they chose to do it this way: one is to protect privacy! By not using facial recognition, they make sure that the app can't easily be pre-loaded with a database of people and look for them all the time. For another, humans are already good at facial recognition. If you can see your friend's face, there's a good chance that you'll recognize them. This, however, helps when you're scanning the crowd and their back might be to you.

Honestly, it sounds like a good idea to me. Sure, it's going to have problems if you're surrounded by identically-dressed people, but you're not left any worse off by that than you were without it. Since it uses their bodily dimensions as well, it may still be of some use. And I know from times that I've been shopping with my wife and was looking for her that I, personally, have a horrible memory for what people are wearing. If I see her face, sure, I'll recognize her - but I often find myself remembering not the outfit she was wearing today, but the one she was wearing yesterday, or the one she was wearing when I met her for lunch.....

Re:Goodbye Anonymity

[F9rDT3ZE]

i hear from acquaintances who work in Google that the algorithms they run on emails do something much like this. among other things, they know when you are thinking of taking another job almost before you do. word is, among the things you must not say on the phone inside the pure-freedom, do-no-evil world of Google, is "let's take this offline" or anything else indicating you don't want to talk about something on the phone, since that's an instant tip that you want to say something unsurveilled. coming soon to our entire society!