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      Episode 5: The white mask

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 18 March - 05:00


    In January 2020, Robert Williams was arrested by Detroit police for a crime he had not committed. The officers were acting on a tip not from a witness or informant. In fact, not from a person at all

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      Canadian university vending machine error reveals use of facial recognition

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 23 February - 18:24


    University of Waterloo dispenser displays facial recognition message despite no prior indication it was monitoring students

    A malfunctioning vending machine at a Canadian university has inadvertently revealed that a number of them have been using facial recognition technology in secret.

    Earlier this month, a snack dispenser at the University of Waterloo showed an error message – Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognition.App.exe – on the screen.

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      Serco ordered to stop using facial recognition technology to monitor staff

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 23 February - 16:07

    Biometric data of more than 2,000 staff at 38 leisure centres was unlawfully processed to check attendance, watchdog finds

    Britain’s data watchdog has ordered a Serco subsidary to stop using facial recognition technology and fingerprint scanning to monitor the attendance of staff at the leisure centres it operates.

    The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that the biometric data of more than 2,000 employees had been unlawfully processed at 38 centres managed by Serco Leisure to check up on their attendance.

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      New compact facial-recognition system passes test on Michelangelo’s David

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 19 February - 22:53 · 1 minute

    A new lens-free and compact system for facial recognition scans a bust of Michelangelo’s David and reconstructs the image using less power than existing 3D surface imaging systems.

    Enlarge / A new lens-free and compact system for facial recognition scans a bust of Michelangelo’s David and reconstructs the image using less power than existing 3D-surface imaging systems. (credit: W-C Hsu et al., Nano Letters, 2024)

    Facial recognition is a common feature for unlocking smartphones and gaming systems , among other uses. But the technology currently relies upon bulky projectors and lenses, hindering its broader application. Scientists have now developed a new facial recognition system that employs flatter, simpler optics that also requires less energy, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nano Letters. The team tested their prototype system with a 3D replica of Michelangelo's famous David sculpture, and found it recognized the face as well as existing smartphone facial recognition.

    The current commercial 3D imaging systems in smartphones (like Apple's iPhone) extract depth information via structured light. A dot projector uses a laser to project a pseudorandom beam pattern onto the face of the person looking at a locked screen. It does so thanks to several other built-in components: a collimator, light guide, and special lenses (known as diffractive optical elements, or DOEs) that break the laser beam apart into an array of some 32,000 infrared dots. The camera can then interpret that projected beam pattern to confirm the person's identity.

    Packing in all those optical components like lasers makes commercial dot projectors rather bulky, so it can be harder to integrate for some applications such as robotics and augmented reality, as well as the next generation of facial recognition technology. They also consume significant power. So Wen-Chen Hsu, of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and the Hon Hai Research Institute in Taiwan, and colleagues turned to ultrathin optical components known as metasurfaces for a potential solution. These metasurfaces can replace bulkier components for modulating light and have proven popular for depth sensors, endoscopes, tomography. and augmented reality systems, among other emerging applications.

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      Unproven AI face scans may estimate age for porn access in UK

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 5 December - 19:27

    Unproven AI face scans may estimate age for porn access in UK

    Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

    AI face detection now counts among the tools that could be used to help adult sites effectively estimate UK user ages and block minors from accessing pornography, the UK's Office of Communications (Ofcom) said in a press release on Tuesday.

    The only foreseeable problem, Ofcom noted: There's little evidence that the AI method of age estimation will be fair, reliable, or effective.

    The UK's legal age to watch porn is 18. To enforce that restriction, under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom will soon require all apps and sites displaying adult content to introduce so-called "age assurance" systems that verify and/or estimate user ages. Sites and apps risk potential fines if they fail to "ensure that children are not normally able to encounter pornography on their service."

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      Search engine that scans billions of faces tries blocking kids from results

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 24 October - 18:04 · 1 minute

    Search engine that scans billions of faces tries blocking kids from results

    Enlarge (credit: Wirestock | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

    A search engine that uses facial recognition to help people scan billions of images to find their photos strewn across the Internet has officially banned searches of minors, The New York Times reported . The move comes after years of criticism from privacy experts, media outlets, and regulators, warning that tech like PimEyes could be abused to stalk children online.

    PimEyes CEO Giorgi Gobronidze told The Times that in addition to setting a "no harm policy," the company has also implemented new AI age-detection technology to detect and block searches of minors. This update is due to privacy concerns that "images of children might be used by [some] individuals with a twisted moral compass and values, such as pedophiles, child predators," Gobronidze said. Critics had long warned that PimEyes' tech made it easy to upload a photo of any child and quickly find other photos or discover their name and address.

    By design, PimEyes is supposed to make it easy for people to figure out where their own photos have been posted online, but PimEyes has no way to stop people from searching for photos of other people, The Times reported. The platform's "data security unit" has monitored suspicious activity in the past by flagging any upload of a child's photo or detecting when male users repeatedly search for photos of women, the BBC reported . Gobronidze confirmed to The Times that out of 118,000 searches per day of PimEyes' database of 3 billion images, the company has detected and banned more than 200 accounts conducting "inappropriate searches of children’s faces."

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      Innocent pregnant woman jailed amid faulty facial recognition trend

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 7 August, 2023 - 18:39

    Innocent pregnant woman jailed amid faulty facial recognition trend

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

    Use of facial recognition software led Detroit police to falsely arrest 32-year-old Porcha Woodruff for robbery and carjacking, reports The New York Times. Eight months pregnant, she was detained for 11 hours, questioned, and had her iPhone seized for evidence before being released. It's the latest in a string of false arrests due to use of facial-recognition technology, which many critics say is not reliable.

    The mistake seems particularly notable because the surveillance footage used to falsely identify Woodruff did not show a pregnant woman, and Woodruff was very visibly pregnant at the time of her arrest.

    The incident began with an automated facial recognition search by the Detroit Police Department. A man who was robbed reported the crime, and police used DataWorks Plus to run surveillance video footage against a database of criminal mug shots. Woodruff's 2015 mug shot from a previous unrelated arrest was identified as a match. After that, the victim wrongly confirmed her identification from a photo lineup, leading to her arrest.

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      Report: OpenAI holding back GPT-4 image features on fears of privacy issues

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 18 July, 2023 - 21:35

    A woman being facially recognized by AI.

    Enlarge (credit: Witthaya Prasongsin (Getty Images))

    OpenAI has been testing its multimodal version of GPT-4 with image-recognition support prior to a planned wide release. However, public access is being curtailed due to concerns about its ability to potentially recognize specific individuals, according to a New York Times report on Tuesday.

    When OpenAI announced GPT-4 earlier this year, the company highlighted the AI model's multimodal capabilities. This meant that the model could not only process and generate text but also analyze and interpret images, opening up a new dimension of interaction with the AI model.

    Following the announcement, OpenAI took its image-processing abilities a step further in collaboration with a startup called Be My Eyes , which is developing an app to describe images to blind users, helping them interpret their surroundings and interact with the world more independently.

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      Iran to use facial recognition to identify women without hijabs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 11 January, 2023 - 14:30

    Illustration of woman wearing hijab with gunsights on her

    Enlarge (credit: James Marshall/Getty Images)

    Last month, a young woman went to work at Sarzamineh Shadi, or Land of Happiness, an indoor amusement park east of Iran’s capital, Tehran. After a photo of her without a hijab circulated on social media, the amusement park was closed, according to multiple accounts in Iranian media. Prosecutors in Tehran have reportedly opened an investigation.

    Shuttering a business to force compliance with Iran’s strict laws for women’s dress is a familiar tactic to Shaparak Shajarizadeh. She stopped wearing a hijab in 2017 because she views it as a symbol of government suppression, and recalls restaurant owners, fearful of authorities, pressuring her to cover her head.

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