With the rapid development of facial recognition technology, this function can now be used to open bank accounts, make online payments, and even pass through security systems at train stations and airports. However, while facial recognition technology brings convenience to personal life, it also has some obvious drawbacks, such as the potential for personal privacy to be violated at any time - others only need to take a picture to find out all your information.

          
The new generation of Apple phones, to be launched in the second half of this year, may have unprecedented facial recognition capabilities, leading the market to expect facial recognition to enter the daily lives of the public. A Wall Street analyst said that the iPhone 8 will be equipped with laser and infrared sensors on the front lens to complete facial recognition. At that time, the facial recognition system may completely replace the current fingerprint recognition system.
In recent years, facial recognition technology has developed rapidly and can now be used to open bank accounts, make online payments, and even pass through security systems at train stations and airports. When a potential dangerous person enters a city, his face may immediately alert the security department.
Professor Kittler of the University of Surrey in the UK said that facial recognition technology has enormous application potential, including security and surveillance, identity verification for commercial transactions, personalized handling of regular customers, and customer response to marketing purposes.
The application of facial recognition technology has appeared all over the world. In China, KFC recently launched its first "smart restaurant," using facial recognition technology to determine the age and gender of customers and combining ordering time to predict customer ordering preferences. Alipay is also experimenting with "smile payment," allowing customers to pay through facial recognition.
Can determine personal personality characteristics
In the United States, medical technology company NextGate has developed a facial recognition technology that can confirm patient identity and thus retrieve all relevant patient medical records. In Israel, a technology company called Faception even claims to be able to determine whether a person is a terrorist, extrovert, pedophile, genius, or professional poker player by analyzing 15 facial details invisible to the naked eye.
In addition, the facial recognition system can also determine an individual's personality characteristics, with an accuracy rate of up to 80%. Apple acquired the facial emotion recognition technology company Emotient last year, and its developed facial recognition technology can even analyze users' emotional responses, such as sadness, anger, grief, and happiness. This technology was first used in the advertising field to analyze users' emotions when watching advertisements; later, it was also applied to the medical field to understand patients who cannot clearly express themselves verbally.
However, the most powerful application of facial recognition technology is still in combating crime. The "face search" tool from technology company VigilantSolutions can analyze more than 350 details of a face, and police can match the suspect's facial features with 15 million "nodes" in the cloud database.
How to identify
The working principle of the facial recognition system is very simple. High-definition cameras and advanced computer software are combined to measure many key "nodes" of the face, such as the distance between the two eyes, the length and width of the nose, etc., to outline the individual's facial features. These data combined with computer learning technology can generate a huge image database.
"Anti-facial recognition movement" protects privacy
However, while the application of facial recognition technology brings convenience to personal life, it also has some obvious drawbacks, such as the potential for personal privacy to be violated at any time. In early 2016, 21-year-old Russian photographer Tasvitkov took a large number of photos of strangers on the St. Petersburg subway, and then used the FindFace mobile phone software to search on Russia's largest social media platform, finding that the success rate of identifying the identities of people in the photos was very high, "I feel like a cyber stalker," he said.
This software was originally intended to help users meet strangers of the opposite sex and develop romantic relationships, but some people actually used it to find out the identities of pornographic film actors. "Facial recognition functions will make some innocent people victims, and personal privacy in public places may not be guaranteed." said a spokesperson for the non-profit organization "Global Voices." "Others only need to take a picture to see your information".
A survey conducted by the Georgetown Privacy and Technology Law Center in the United States shows that about half of American adults (more than 117 million people) have uploaded their images to networks with some facial recognition capabilities, which is "an urgent threat" to personal privacy. For many years, US national security agencies have been collecting facial images to meet security and law enforcement needs. It is reported that New York City plans to install facial recognition technology equipment on bridges and tunnels to scan people entering and leaving these locations.
In Europe, which pays more attention to personal privacy, the use of facial recognition technology is likely to be more limited. "In some European countries, facial recognition technology is not allowed to be used in public areas." said data privacy expert Bodman. In order to protect personal privacy, German scientist Harvey launched a movement called Hyperface to study how to confuse facial recognition systems with physical means. The Hyperface project includes drawing humanoid patterns on clothes or textiles to make the system mistakenly think it is a face.
This is not the first time Harvey has tried to confuse facial recognition software. In a previous project called CVDazzle, he tried to create an artistic makeup and hairstyle to prevent computers from successfully performing facial recognition. "The application of facial recognition technology will obviously bring security guarantees, but if one day you are mistaken by the system as a fugitive, you may not be very happy." said Harvey.