I was aware of most of the data protection and privacy concerns presented, but I wasn't aware facial recognition system are being used as widely as suggested here.
If these systems ever become widely adopted I might seriously consider obscuring my face in public.
Here in the UK I've noticed over the last year or so many supermarket self checkouts have been fitted with cameras and screens. I'm not naive enough to believe I wasn't being recorded previously, but I can't help but find this trend of sticking a camera directly in my face whenever I'm trying to make a purchase extremely insulting and violating to my sense of privacy. Now after watching this I have almost no doubt that facial recognition software is installed on these systems.
I've spoken to other people about the rudeness of this but most people seem to think it's fine. Perhaps I'm just weird and more bothered about this stuff than most people. If sticking a camera in someone's face when they're trying to purchase something in a pharmacy isn't going too far though I do wonder if the average person would really care about anything presented here.
Even the sunglasses, beard, face paint, bad lighting or puberty didn't throw off the model.
The open source dlib model was considerably worse, but AWS Rekognition was incredible
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/how-facial-recognition-w...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/22/18107885/china-facial-re... https://you.com/search?q=facial+recognition+in+china
Cameras previously would show a wide angle view of the store so you can see when someone put something under their jacket, etc. I can understand and accept this.
In comparison these new cameras have a very swallow angle of view, they're zoomed in on your face and they're in portrait. They would be completely useless if you wanted to see if someone was, say, putting something under their jacket at checkout.
These are there to purposefully record your face and let you know that they're doing that full colour and HD whether you like it or not. It's vile and extremely rude. I've never signed an agreement accepting such an obtrusive and unreasonable violation of my privacy when I enter a supermarket - at least online I'd have to accept T&Cs before placing my order.
It is > 20 years later now... I wonder how accommodating they are when a whale walks in?
I'm glad I allowed webcam permission because it was an interesting, informative, and fun look at biometric tracking.
Apparently I'm "violently average" which is not a way I would previously have described myself. According to this site the most unusual thing about me is that I read the terms and conditions before ticking the "accept" box.
I’d put forward the hypothesis that people who read the terms, and who are therefore concerned about privacy, are also less likely to be willing to agree to submit the data at the end.
This is the worst anti-surveillance argument. The last thing I want is to be accurately predicted. As far as I'm concerned, once the models are perfected and they can accurately predict everything you will do or say, things will be far worse.
I had the pleasure of meeting him a while ago and seeing him give a talk about how companies gather data and the chilling effects on society.
If you're extra extra paranoid, use a disposable VM in Qubes OS.
If you open a website in a fresh browser context and let it use your camera, isn’t this about the same as walking down a street with CCTV cameras?
Could be used for a scam, by a stalker, for social engineering, or several other evil ploys. Today, there are so many possible bad actions which are happening... On average, they are unlikely, but not impossible. And who knows about the long run.
> If you open a website in a fresh browser context and let it use your camera, isn’t this about the same as walking down a street with CCTV cameras?
In my country, there are harsh regulations on public cameras. Private people are not even allowed to capture you outside from being in the background.
The worst case scenario is far greater in magnitude than the best case scenario.
Just not worth any risk here.
It's more akin to those spying doorbells from Amazon and friends, which I personally would try to avoid when I can.
The concentration of data and the lack of necessity of your face being recorded in the first place change the decision making process significantly.
I get your point, but I am not sure how fresh our browser context is.
Rather than talking about webcam permissions, I think we should talk about how much we use and rely on bad ML models. Dating apps might want to rate attractiveness, but we have no checks in place to see how we're being rated. Especially free open access models probably don't come with a thorough bias&limitations datasheet.
That video by the creator of this website is a must watch by everybody reading this thread; it is not all fun and games.
Thanks for posting this.
I took a shower, shaved, brushed my teeth, put on a nice shirt, fixed my hair and offered a good angle of my best smile at the camera. I was now a 9.
The model tries to fit you into a very narrow niche. On top of that it will do so poorly.
The beauty scoring model was found on Github (this or this one). The models to predict age, gender and facial expression/emotion are part of FaceApiJS, which forms the backbone of this project. Do note that its developer doesn't fully divulge on which photos the models were trained. Also, FaceApiJS is bad at detecting "Asian guys".
Apparently some dating apps rates their users with these sort of algorithms. Maybe I'm living under a rock but I did not know that was a thing.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under grant agreement No 786641.
I know for a fact that I've acknowledged funding agencies on papers about topics that were at best extremely tangential to my grant.
A less flattering possibility is that they wanna use EU affiliation as a badge for respect for privacy or something like that.
I'm pretty basic and it guess my age exactly. lol
And, yeah, no one has ever accused me of being normal :-)
And my expression was happy, unlike all you normal ugly folk.
The site also underestimated my age by 10 years (and then accused me of lying about my age!).
And I have to say, thowawayben, that you are indeed one handsome devil. Please feel free to upvote my comment.
* There's a sortof hidden/unlabelled button - did you press it?
* Did you notice the nickname you were given, slowly building up over time?
* Do you have resting sad face? Or resting happy face?
Or a resting angry face.
I’ll thank our AI overlords for the compliment, but I don’t think I’m off the charts attractive.
You are spoiled.
That hurts.
But the way it tells me that is I lied about my age (I didn't)
Kinda reminds me of SingStar where I scored better if I simply sung louder - even if I sung a completely different text...
JC Denton: I don't see anything amusing about spying on people.
Morpheus: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.
JC Denton: Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.
Morpheus: The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.
I used android devices, now I use an iphone, and I keep cloud accounts and personal photos backups with both companies. I have linked-in, facebook, instagram and handful of other accounts with varying levels of personal information.
This cat is already out of the bag, and has been for quite some time.
I gamed the attractiveness model for as long as I could, trying different angles and glasses on/off and hit 9.2. If dating apps use a max() across pictures that would be great.
[?] Read terms - hah! I wanted to check what would happen if I don't tick the box. It let me through. I would've most likely read it otherwise.
[?] Beauty - okay, I'm flattered.
[-] Age - it thought I lied, made me almost ten years younger. I guess the model was trained to studio-quality photos, not what my camera had produced against a bright window.
[+] Gender - yeah, it got me, I'm an attack helicopter^W^W^W^W. Just kidding, but yeah, the model had worked correctly.
[-] BMI - it thought I'm overweight. I was underweight until very recently when I've started to work out and grew a bit of muscle making it to the lower threshold of "normal" BMI range.
[-] Life expectancy - hard to argue about it, but it's probably somewhat off, because I've moved almost halfway across the globe.
[-] Came closer - that was really weird because it thought I didn't, but I sure did. I've got at least 15cm closer, making my face from 1/4 screen tall to almost fit the it vertically. How it missed that is beyond me.
[+] Expression - OK, yea, I think I've smiled. Not sure if that was at that doggy - I was mostly just grimacing at myself.
So now it told me about my normalcy, I wonder the same thing - is that model normal, i.e. is it representative of what most people/companies why employ models like this actually use?
Attractiveness a lot higher than i would expect (but still in range). Could be that attractiveness is related to age and BMI?
Seems im not normal when it comes to looking at dogo (why people are so sad?)
It was fun, NGL.
I never noticed the dog picture somehow, and I guess sad is my default facial expression.
That's fantastic; I enjoyed the presentation. It's pretty revealing.
Also the computer thinks i'm a 6.9 but also decided i was 6 years older than i actually am. What a wonderfully well executed demo.
It makes me question how computers handle attraction vs. age. I know from personal experience that I will think someone older is more attractive if they wear their age better. I consider myself a 3-4 but that's knowing my age, could there be a case where the perceived age affects the perceived beauty?
https://qoves.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnlvhYDQLq4d_C3JYEVnWAQ
I have often wanted to study about Beauty/Facial Expressions/Emotion Display etc. and had browsed Paul Ekman's books. Given how much we judge each other (most of the time, unconsciously) based on a snap view of the Face only, i believe this is an important subject for everybody to understand. Your Qoves Studio links (in particular; their Youtube channel) seem very interesting to gain more knowledge on this subject.
Thanks for posting the links.
> So! Lets talk about your face
Nope nope nope nope I am gone.
It underestimated my BMI a bit, though I am losing weight at the moment and my face does seem to be getting thinner so maybe that's thrown it, and generally it told me I'm quite attractive, so ... all good :)
> In this 'test' your face is compared with that of all the other people who came before you.
No data is sent, but your face is compared with that of all the other people that came before you....
It kept saying my age was 18-20, but I'm 32.
Finally it kept predicting my BMI as 30+, even though it's 22.5.
So it was interesting, and a pretty cool tech demonstration, but it wasn't too accurate for me.
* It kept flipping between genders, pretty much exact 50% +-10%, until I put my hair down.
* BMI was flakey, but always hard out of range.
* It put me at age 16. I wish I was that young.
* Beauty score was, as expected, very not good.
Oh, also I'm 60% better looking than spice girls (will certainly share this with news with my fiancee when she comes back).
It also somehow guessed my BMI correctly (very close), I got 21.5 score and my BMI is 22.
Impressive work!
Hope he can figure out how to remove the bad data.
guess I know which webcam I'm using from now on! xD
I wonder if you are too far off "normal" it won't recognize you correctly, eg age.
It seems to be down rn
Thanks, I guess? Got pretty close on age underestimated my BMI a little.
What is it?
Who knew? Because I certainly didn't.
Also sad to hear that my life expectancy is only 58
"How gullible am I for uploading my face to some random data harvester?"
Also, very VERY interesting and informative project.
OK, I'll take it.
Which isn't surprising, since I look like crap with that shitty cam.
And who knows what they do with the sensible data they manipulate as a result
How can this still happen nowadays, what a shame and what a waste of EU money
It clearly shows their lack of direction, ethics and care
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/786641
Total cost € 2 865 947,50
What a shame
