IEEE Spectrum March 9, 2021 To develop a nighttime and low-light face recognition capability for the unconstrained or difficult lighting settings a team of researchers in the US (West Virginia University, Army Research Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, industry) unveiled a dataset called Research Laboratory Visible-Thermal Face Dataset (ARLVTF) with over 500,000 images from 395 subjects. The data was captured using a LWIR camera mounted alongside a stereo setup of three visible spectrum cameras. Variability in expressions, pose, and eyewear were systematically recorded. The dataset has been curated with extensive annotations, metadata, and standardized protocols for evaluation. The […]
Tag Archives: Facial recognition
The troubling rise of facial recognition technology (podcast; 35 minutes)
Nature Podcast November 18, 2020 Scientists have grave concerns over ethical and societal impacts of facial-recognition technology. Cities across the globe are installing thousands of surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology. Although marketed to reduce crime, researchers worry that these systems are ripe for exploitation and are calling for strict regulations on their deployment. Despite concerns surrounding consent and use, researchers are still working on facial recognition technology. Nature surveyed 480 researchers who have published papers on facial recognition, AI, and computer science. The results revealed that many researchers think there is a problem. Podcast
Image cloaking tool thwarts facial recognition programs
TechXplore August 5, 2020 To help individuals inoculate their images against unauthorized facial recognition models, researchers at the University of Chicago have developed a system called Fawkes. It helps individuals add imperceptible pixel-level changes (they call “cloaks”) to their own photos before releasing them. When used to train facial recognition models, the “cloaked” images produce functional models that consistently cause normal images of the user to be misidentified. In experiments Fawkes provided 95+% protection against user recognition regardless of how trackers train their models. They have shown that Fawkes is robust against a variety of countermeasures that try to detect […]
Emotion-reading tech fails the racial bias test
Phys.org January 3, 2019 Researchers at Wake Forest University compared the emotional analysis from two different facial recognition services, Face and Microsoft’s Face API. Both services interpreted black players as having more negative emotions than white players. According to the researchers there are two different mechanisms. Face consistently interprets black players as angrier than white players, even controlling for their degree of smiling. Microsoft registers contempt instead of anger, and it interprets black players as more contemptuous when their facial expressions are ambiguous. As the players’ smile widens, the disparity disappears. The finding has implications for individuals, organizations, and society, […]
Scientists teach the neural network to carry out video facial recognition — using a single photo
Eurekalert July 5, 2018 Researchers in Russia used the theory of fuzzy sets and probability theory to develop a video recognition algorithm. The algorithm significantly improves the accuracy (by 2-6% compared to earlier experiments) of identifying faces by video in real time with a small number of images for several well-known neural network architectures, such as VGGFace, VGGFace2, ResFace and LightCNN. It estimates to what degree one frame is closer to one person, and to what degree the other frame is closer to the next person. Then it compares how similar the training still photos of these two people are […]
IBM to release world’s largest facial analytics dataset
Phys.org June 27, 2018 One of the biggest issues causing bias in facial analysis is the lack of diverse data to train systems on. IBM is releasing a facial attribute and identity training dataset of over 1 million images to improve facial analysis. It is annotated with attributes and identity, leveraging geo-tags from Flickr images to balance data from multiple countries and active learning tools to reduce sample selection bias. Unlike the current datasets the IBM dataset has a single capability to match attributes (hair color, facial hair, etc.) and identify multiple images of the same person. A dataset which […]