Japan's NEC Corp Says New Facial Recognition System Isn't Stopped By Masks (mashable.com) 36
Japan's NEC Corp. says face marks aren't an obstacle to its facial recognition tech. Mashable reports: The Japanese company claims its new facial recognition system can identify people with face masks in less than one second, with an accuracy rate higher than 99.9 percent. The system works by closely examining the parts of a person's face not covered by a mask, such as the eyes and surrounding areas. It does require the person to submit a photo in advance, though.
The idea is for the system to be used at security checkpoints in office buildings, airports, etc., so mask-wearers can go through without removing their masks. NEC is also testing the technology out for automated payments at an unmanned convenience store in the company's headquarters in Tokyo. The company has sold the system to Lufthansa and Swiss International Airlines.
The idea is for the system to be used at security checkpoints in office buildings, airports, etc., so mask-wearers can go through without removing their masks. NEC is also testing the technology out for automated payments at an unmanned convenience store in the company's headquarters in Tokyo. The company has sold the system to Lufthansa and Swiss International Airlines.
Re: Damn Trump (Score:2)
Hello MirrorTrump!
Onle a Trumpalike would suggest hanging ANYONE.
Have fun hanging yourself first, if you actually obey your own screamed rules.
Easily countered, this is (Score:3)
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Sounds like glasses will do. Tinted of course. Or a suitable haircut.
Re: Easily countered, this is (Score:2)
Re: Easily countered, this is (Score:2)
The point is that everyone would do it, you moron. :P
Otherwise have fun being that one collaborator guy who gets it in a back alley, if history is a reference.
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Not necessary though. You can trick image recognition in ways that won't stand out to humans [www.cbc.ca].
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This only works for digital images, if you're walking around getting seen by CCTV cameras you don't have access to the digital images to alter them in this way. And since the algorithm/AI to do this is not publicly available it's useless.
A mostly-inconspicuous way to achieve something similar is to attach a half-dozen or so high power (a few watts each) IR LEDs to a baseball cap or similar. If the IR light is the correct wavelength it will be invisible to humans viewing you but will be extremely bright to
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This only works for digital images,
Why do you think that?
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wear a furry suit. but the disadvantage is you might be mistaken as a furry and invited to a drug-fueled furry party [youtube.com]
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Surely only a small minority of the population, but perhaps a majority of the /. members.
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Now people can just wear a full football helmet and Guy Fawkes mask over their cloth mask. Identify that.
Was just going to say a loud "bullshit!" to NEC but yea, what you said. Or how about a Dr. Doom helmet?
Armed robberys... (Score:1)
Re: Armed robberys... (Score:4, Insightful)
Way, way down.
Ever since we stopped putting lead in gasoline, curiously.
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Define accuracy. (Score:2)
Are we talking about specificity or sensitivity? Being able to recognize that two faces that are the same are the same is a whole lot easier than rejecting other faces that are slightly similar.
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Define the use case. If they are selling to airlines then presumably it's identifying passengers. How does the airline get a known actuate photo of you though?
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Last time I flew with Lufthansa they didn't check any photos. They made sure I had my passport with me (so they didn't have to fly me back home) but did not open it.
That was over a decade ago I think, maybe things have changed now.
Good luck with the GDPR, Lufthansa! (Score:2)
You insufferable totalitarian pieces of shit.
Will be a nice time for you in prison, when the totalitarian pest is getting the justice of a nation of law.
Of course! It's AI! (Score:4, Funny)
The system uses AI so it isn't even necessary to see a face to recognize it.
I do not think so NEC (Score:1)
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OpenCV is a fairly basic image recognition framework that is used ubiquitously. Nowadays with more advanced AI models, however, it is usually only implemented to simplify say converting images into grayscale pixel arrays, if used at all--in other words: preprocessing.
I get the idea that they're probably not using "just" OpenCV or some other image manipulation software for their facial recognition. And before underestimating the potential of AI, Two Minute Papers [youtube.com] is a great channel for discovering some leadi
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Wow, was the AI model trained by Lois Lane??
and Japan can still sell suppressive tech to China (Score:1)
How lucky for NEC that they can cash in on their technology!
Cisco has already been doing this (Score:2)
We saw this during 2020 with Cisco's name labels and facial tracking on their devices. Worked pretty well during COVID, both for auto zooming and identifying the person to show their name.
https://blogs.cisco.com/collab... [cisco.com]
Meanwhile (Score:2)
The technology promises to revolutionize police work. Already it has identified a team of bank robbers in record time. Anyone knowing the current whereabouts of Bugs Bunny, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or James T. Kirk is urged to call the police.
Sounds reasonable, and this might be the product (Score:3)
Facial recognition is NEC's claim to fame in AI and they were a top speaker at a Japanese AI conference discussing it. Actually I met their project lead a couple times at conferences.. he was very careful about what he said. They have won international awards for it, and became a poster child of AI for the Japanese government's AI push.
So it is tough for them considering the slew of regulations from cities and schools who do not want facial recognition. (Have to say I also don't like it, but on the other hand it is fabulous on my iPhone while the fingerprint sensor on my Mac sucks especially in winter and with disinfectant use.)
That said, NEC did show once that they are or will be selling sensors to be located next to doors in an office building. As you walk by, it captures half of your head in 3D as well as photo so it is really accurate. I suppose it would replace the security card on a lanyard. As far as recognition while wearing a mask, this use case would cover it and I didn't see it in the article, but potentially they might use 3D capture / bone structure analysis and even posture / gait analysis, height, or laser telephoto of retina for all we know! There are things they could be checking to achieve the goal of identifying masked wearers and the system I just described might be the one they are talking about.
Maybe their existing system can handle it, or they put more preprocessing into the shape and size of the head. Having a sensor from above to capture skull shape without being fooled by hair style might be an idea. As far as glasses, they ask you to take them off. Whether or not their AI can deliver 95% accuracy while wearing a mask is just a matter of their sensors and algorithms, probably likely I mean you can do the same with your mark 1.0 eyeballs right? So a computer can do it too, the question is how little hardware can they get away with applying to achieve it.
My only surprise is that submission of a single still photo would be enough to train it. My guess is that Coronavirus is a major wrench in their plans, so making it work for surgical mask wearers, even with less accuracy, is critical to their product. All the silly comments about bike helmets Guy Fawkes masks are plain silliness. The world is not all as insane as the U.S. and NEC's product plans are not aimed at dealing with such idiots who would never be put in front of the product in the first place.
But what is its accuracy rate on White people? (Score:2)
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not likely (Score:1)
I worked on this in years past.
They are most likely not talking about identification, but rather verification -- verifying whether you are who you say you are, a much easier problem. Even then, testing has probably been done on only a small number of not very diverse people.