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Facebook's Face Identification Project Is Accurate 97.25% of the Time

Posted by Soulskill on from the almost-as-good-as-the-NSA's-version dept.

kc123 tips news that 'DeepFace,' the software research project created by Facebook engineers to identify people in pictures, is now accurate 97.25% of the time. In other words, it's almost as good at recognizing faces as humans, who are able to determine whether two photos show the same person 97.53% of the time. The article says DeepFace reaches that level of accuracy "regardless of variations in lighting or whether the person in the picture is directly facing the camera." It continues, "DeepFace processes images of faces in two steps. First it corrects the angle of a face so that the person in the picture faces forward, using a 3-D model of an 'average' forward-looking face. Then the deep learning comes in as a simulated neural network works out a numerical description of the reoriented face. If DeepFace comes up with similar enough descriptions from two different images, it decides they must show the same face. ... The deep-learning part of DeepFace consists of nine layers of simple simulated neurons, with more than 120 million connections between them. To train that network, Facebook’s researchers tapped a tiny slice of data from their company’s hoard of user images—four million photos of faces belonging to almost 4,000 people."

19 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Say goodbye by danknight48 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To more of your privacy in the commercial world.
    "You've just been DeepFaced" But at least its all for a good cause, marketing and profits at the cost of our private lives!......

    1. Re:Say goodbye by gnupun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When are they planning to connect face identification with the street/store surveillance cameras? Then they could know who is where anytime of the day unless you wear big hats, large sunglasses, fake beards etc.

    2. Re:Say goodbye by StripedCow · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Muslims are right: Burqa's are the way to go...

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    3. Re:Say goodbye by pr0nbot · · Score: 4, Funny

      Burqas are also handy for hiding one's stash of apo'strophe's.

    4. Re:Say goodbye by VorpalRodent · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When this happens, think of the convenience! All you'll need to do is look at the nearest camera and give a thumbs up, and Facebook will automatically mark that you Liked [whatever you're standing near].

      Two people could become friends by finding the nearest Big Brother station and doing a thumbs up together.

      One of (many) problems will be how they contextualize all that data. You know, this started as a joke, but seriously, if Facebook had a feed of this kind of data, it would be interesting to see the hypothetical profile they build based on what they would see an individual near vs. what they claim to like on their public page.

      --
      Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
  2. DeepFace by BisuDagger · · Score: 5, Funny

    It sounds like the next capital hill scandal. Fortunately for teenaged girls, their faces are always scrunched up and lips pursed, when they turn 25 and take a normal picture Facebook won't be able to recognize them.

  3. Re:Almost as good as humans they say... by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Remember, Charlie Chaplin once lost at a Charlie Chaplin look alike contest.

    So did Harpo Marx.

    (He didn't look a thing like Charlie Chaplin.)

  4. Privacy nutjobs take note by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please notice that this feature can be disabled in you Facebook account options. I'm at work and can't access it right now but I know the option is there, which takes care of both auto tagging (i.e. DeepFace) and manual tagging (i.e. your friends tag you on photos).

    And It's not like your Facebook ID was issued when you were born, like your SSN or birth certificate. You willingly signed up for the service, so quit complaining about privacy bullshit, or quit using Facebook.

    1. Re:Privacy nutjobs take note by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't have a facebook account. So how I can disable the option of my face being recognized and tagged by facebook in pictures uploaded by others?

    2. Re:Privacy nutjobs take note by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I never signed up to facebook. A number of my friends however did. They 'invited' me to join facebook by giving it my email address to facebook. It got a little insane with the facebook reminders so I 'unsubscribed'. In doing this, I created a hidden profile which is blacklisted.

      My friends upload images of me to facebook. Facebook cookies on my computer track me when I visit any page which has the facebook button on it. My email provider Yahoo may well be sharing information about me with facebook (without my knowledge). Eventually facebook will gather all the connecting pieces of information on me to have a face, an email, and a browsing (possible purchasing) history.

      Just because you can 'opt out' doesn't mean that they're not doing it anyway in the background. I'm not comfortable knowing that these people know more about me than I remember about myself.

    3. Re:Privacy nutjobs take note by coofercat · · Score: 4, Informative

      The problem is that person X who has never signed up for Facebook ends up in a picture with someone (Person Y) who did. No one yet knows who Person X is, and Person Y doesn't identify them, and has all the recognition/auto tag features turned off. Good thing too, because Person X looks like they're so drunk they've lost the ability to control their bowels and keep their clothes on properly.

      Rinse and repeat.

      Remember, facebook still runs the recognition on all photos - they use such information to surface the posts you might be most interested in. If you're in a few photos with Person X (even if unidentified), then Facebook still wants to surface your friends photos with Person X because (quite reasonably) you might be interested in them.

      Years late, someone identifies Person X. Now all pictures of Person X can be found by using Person X's name, even though they never signed up for Facebook.

      This is a specific case of the general concerns that always come out whenever there's a privacy/facebook story on slashdot. You don't even have to play the game to lose on Facebook.

    4. Re:Privacy nutjobs take note by gsslay · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You are blind to the fact that this is not a matter of going online to facebook. This is the reverse. This is the point where facebook starts coming to you. In real life. In the street, at the airport, in the store, at the dentist. And it'll know you, not necessarily because you've told it, but because all your acquaintances have.

      Facebook will pass that information on to the airport/store/hospital because they'll pay to know who you are before you even approach the counter. "So they can better serve you."

    5. Re:Privacy nutjobs take note by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Facebook won't [at least, publicly] autotag you unless you actually have an account, because otherwise there's no account to associate your face with. They may well do this internally, but that information isn't available to users if so. Of course, someone else can create an account "on your behalf" and then those photos can be associated with that identity, and thus with one another; that's linked to your identity practically but not directly.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Re:Some of us saw this coming by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All it takes is to be identified once. Just one friend snapping a picture of you & pals at a wedding,who then posts the picture on FB, and dutifully identifies each person in the photo. After that, every image of you available on the web will be linked to you. That picture of you puking your guts out at some drunken frathouse blowout that you hoped everyone had forgotten about will now be on the first page of a Google search on your name.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  6. Re:Fuck Facebook by sunderland56 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fuck Facebook

    So, you're saying that "Deep Face" is a euphemism?

  7. Re:I am the 2.75% by Ozymandias_KoK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...because they all look alike? I heard they were all really smart and know martial arts, too.

  8. Math by coinreturn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    4 million photos of 4 thousand people. That is an average of 1000 images of each person. Wow. It's really hard to imagine people have that many photos of themselves on Facebook (okay, the teenagers do take selfies daily, but that would still be 3 years of daily selfies). I also see a lot of occurrences of people being "tagged" in a photo just so that person will be alerted to the existence of the photo - for example, photos of their kids doing something cute. That's gotta fuck with the algorithm a bit.

  9. Training the data by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I logged into Facebook for the first time in about 6 months, and it required me to authenticate myself by answering a series of questions about who was in each picture. It would display 3 pictures, each showing a square around a particular person, and it would ask who the person is. It was multiple choice.

    I wonder if this is how they confirm that the data is correct, to eliminate intentional errors. You can ask a person who doesn't own the picture and didn't tag it to confirm the person in there. By masking it as an authorization request you convince people who otherwise would not be involved in tagging to participate.

  10. Why this DOESN'T work by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Recently, FB decided that it needed to verify that I was really me when logging in. To do this, it presented me with a bunch of photos from my "friends" that had been tagged and insisted that I choose a name of someone in the photo. If I got enough of them wrong, it would "lock" my account. (Not quite "lock" but I had to try it again). Not only did it pull up obscure photos from "friends" I rarely interact with so I had little chance of knowing who was in the photo. But get this: It pulled up photos of people facing away from the camera and expected me to know who the person was from behind. Da fuq, FB? Seriously?!?