18 ms·
You'd be surprised / scared / outraged if you knew how common this is. Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched
by kimburgess 9y ago
You'd be surprised / scared / outraged if you knew how common this is. Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched, analysed and optimised for. Advertising in the physical world is just as scummy as it's online equivalent.
Check out the video here http://sightcorp.com/ http://sightcorp.com/ for an ultra creepy overview. You can even try their live demo: https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basic/ https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basic/.
- noobermin 9y ago>You can even try their live demo I'd rather not give them my facial image so they can optimize for me.
- frakr 9y agoMatched to your IP none the less. I wonder why Microsoft made that "how old are you?" web app...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aub3bhat 9y agoEverytime I eat at Chipotle I smile at the sign on door that proclaims this property is protected by Envysion.
- shitgoose 9y agojust tried it... 57 yo?! Fucking kids wrote this code. Everyone above 30 is an old man for them.
- muppetman 9y agoI'm 40 and it keeps saying I"m a 28y/o
- mythrwy 9y agoIt just said I'm 23 on one picture. The other one unfortunately was pretty close to my real age.
- mrep 9y agoIt said I was 35 years old and yet I am 23 so I don't think it is just you
- AckSyn 9y agoearly 40s, tells me I'm late 20s. Must be the good "jeans" :P
- TFortunato 9y agoI tried the demo. A little sad, that it sees me as 12 years older than I am, and that I apparently always look angry and disgusted! I'm going to blame it on my glasses and bushy beard, and try to look at the bright side - apparently face scanning systems aren't quite good enough to get a read on me yet. (And try not to be too sad about looking like a grumpy old man) (Anyone else with a glasses, a beard, or other non-typical facial features want to comment? I'm curious now how well their system handles these?)
- geowwy 9y agoIt thinks I'm 15-20 years older than I am, and even if I smile it thinks I'm angry.
- allengeorge 9y agoApparently I'm a 40+ yr-old male. At least it got the "male" part right.
- sbuttgereit 9y agoI did well... it said I was an angry 33 y/o male. Well, I am male... I'm almost 50... and I didn't think smiling at the camera conveyed anger... but who am I to question our AI overlords ;-) (edit)... on the other hand they probably were just trying to sell product so thought flattery was the right approach...
- cortesoft 9y agoBearded male here, and it got me exactly right the first time - 33 yr old male, 100% happiness. The second time it thought I was 28, which increased my happiness even more.
- tim333 9y agoPretty good with me too. Guessed 51. I'm 53. My happiness was inscrutable.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- laen 9y agoI was blown away by the accuracy of Microsoft's https://how-old.net/ https://how-old.net/ This just kicked it up a notch.
- mfarris 9y agoCounterpoint: this tool pegged my 8-year-old as 13 (and she looks younger than her age) and me as 56... well into the double-digit error zone. Someone recently thought I was 30. People aren't any better than computers.
- froindt 9y agoWhen I was 18, some lady at the community pancake breakfast in my grandpa's small town told my mom that 13 and younger are free. Humans make mistakes too.
- Traubenfuchs 9y agoIf it fails, it fails spectacularly, worse than any human ever would.
- macintux 9y agoWhen I was 18, someone thought I was 35. You apparently don't appreciate how failure-prone humans are.
- Sunset 9y agoAre you by chance of a specific ethnicity? (no offense). These systems fail spectacularly if the training set includes only certain ethnicities and the test-ee is not one of them.
- Angostura 9y agoIt thinks I'm 91. I am not 91.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoOh dear it thinks I'm a 35 year old woman...
- paulddraper 9y agoAnd I suppose you're not?
- qb45 9y agoIt's AI, it knows you are secretly trans.
- egypturnash 9y agoNow I kinda want to see what comes out if one gives a neural network a big pile of pre-transition photos of trans people, and another pile of similarly old photos of cis people. Would it be able to reliably predict if someone's likely to transition based on some subtle cues in the images? Problematic parts: sourcing these images (I know there sure aren't many photos of pre-transition me, and I don't let the ones in my possession go much of anywhere), lots of ethical issues around having a system that can say "I am 97% sure this person is gonna want to transition". Also probably lots of other ethical issues I'm not thinking of.
- qb45 9y agoNo idea, I wasn't really being serious, but what inspired me was a real case of a woman who somehow got identified as pregnant by her supermarket long before she was willing to tell anybody (I don't remember reasons) and they sent her some coupons or something and her family found out. Needless to say, she didn't appreciate.
- SuperGent 9y agoIt was the father who complained. The case as reported by NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...
- joshrotenberg 9y agoNow your employer can monitor your facial expressions to determine if you are actually working or just reading HN.
- paulcole 9y agoThe future is here: "WorkSmart can track workers' keystroke activity and take webcam images to ensure they're doing their jobs." http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2017/05/jives_new_owner_says_it_will_m.html http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2017/05/j...
- ioquatix 9y agoWe used to do this in a school - it wasn't creepy - hear me out: We had labs of iMacs and if anything happened to a machine, kids would (more often than not) just yank the power cord. Occasionally this would foobar the machine entirely and create unnecessary work. We couldn't catch the culprits. So, if the machine managed to boot up successfully, after an unexpected power loss, we would take a photo using the built in camera and send it along with a ticket to the job queue, as well as do a complete re-image of the machine (automatically). The number of funny photos we collected of kids just starting at the computer with WTF looks on their faces. But - from these photos we at least had the opportunity to educate the individuals about how to look after the computers a bit better.
- hackuser 9y agoCouldn't you just identify the user by their logon?
- kbenson 9y agoYou're assuming there were usernames and passwords. For consumer grade devices in decades past, that was not the norm.
- rtkwe 9y agoIt's been a while but I don't think the old iMacs at my elementary school had individual user logins at the system level. For things like the reading test program there was a login I think but not for the whole machine.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Stratoscope 9y agoI'm 65 and it says I am 39. This is a wonderful app. I will use it every day! It also picked up the colors in my aloha shirt perfectly. (Anyone who knows me knows that I am to aloha shirts as Steve Jobs was to black turtlenecks.) When I want to feel young and go shopping for shirts, now I know what to do!
- jstanley 9y agoI'm a man and it thinks I'm a woman. But it also scores me high for anger and sadness, despite (what I thought to be!) a rather neutral expression. Perhaps it knows more than we think :)
- sesteel 9y agoHey! We should make a club. I am a 41 year old male and it recognized me as a 26 year old female. It recognized my wife at her age and gender until she took her glasses off. She lost ten years and stated, "I'm never wearing my glasses again!" Then, proceeded to walk straight into the wall.
- OskarS 9y agoAs a 30 year old male who apparently looks 42, I hate all of you.
- ironic_ali 9y agoTake your glasses off (but check for walls before you do)..
- sokz 9y agoI am a 22 year old male who looks like a 39 year old.
- pharrlax 9y agoYou can mess with it quite a bit by making different expressions and looking different directions. Though I'm guessing it gets a lot more accurate when it can take and average multiple shots.
- asher_ 9y agoWhy is this scummy exactly? If a salesperson was to try to sell to you in a store, they would take into account how you appear and act to tailor the sale. There's nothing wrong with that. Why is it suddenly bad if a machine does it?
- r0muald 9y agoBecause when you talk to a salesperson you know you're being looked at (and reciprocally you're looking at them), and human memory is limited so it's unlikely they will retain any "data" about you when the contact is finished. Here, instead, there is no indication that you're being watched, analyzed and kept recorded for indefinite amounts of time.
- ludjer 9y agoIf you are in public you are being looked at I do not understand your logic. When you go in a public place there are already public accessible web cams that people use to track this kind of thing i remember a thesis that used public accessible cams to try and track people and build up a database. I have always had the opinion you lose privacy when you leave your house since you are in public, and public like is opposite of private/privacy so to me it makes sense.
- pyre 9y agoJust because there is no expectation of privacy does not mean that a reasonable person would assume that their every action is being recorded in precise detail to be stored away forever by a third party.
- fixermark 9y ago... but mostly because reasonable people haven't been brought up to speed on what is technologically feasible now.
- Silhouette 9y ago
- joshmn 9y agoReally neat, except, it's about... 22 years and 5 months off. Plus a gender. http://i.imgur.com/wVmPdDj.png http://i.imgur.com/wVmPdDj.png
- yeukhon 9y agoI tried, but nothing from the response... is that normal?
- metal_guru 9y ago"Emotion Recognition Understand how your customers feel. Detect and measure facial expressions like happiness, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and fear." Creepy, indeed.
- fixermark 9y agoPerhaps. On the other hand, it's something that good salespeople are doing internally already; there's an argument to be made that this is just automating yet another part of the customer service process. (There's an old joke that sometimes shows up on HN about augmenting an automated bugtracker to snap a photo when a crash is detected or a bug is reported, so developers can be reminded that bugs tie down to real people who are actually sad / angry that the software failed them ;) ).
- amingilani 9y agoBy grinning like an idiot I was classified as a very happy 33 year old female. I'm a 25 year old male. I tried variations of the standard expressions and pulled off sad, disgust, anger quite easily. I knew binge watching Lie To Me before my psychology mid would come handy at some point!
- AznHisoka 9y agoif you ever are homeless you could be like the guy from The Imposter (2012 film) and trick a family into believing you are their long lost daughter.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Godel_unicode 9y agoI love how many people replied to your comment about how creepy this is with their age, appearance, and gender.
- wfunction 9y agoI love how people tried it in the first place. Now the site has faces tied to IP addresses.
- ibic 9y agoYou can use url, e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Donald_Trump_official_portrait_%28crop%29.jpg/1200px-Donald_Trump_official_portrait_%28crop%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Do...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- HenryBemis 9y agohahahah!!! I did try this image and here are the results (removed plenty of px-related lines). My commentary next to the "<---" : "error_code": 0, <--so i guess no error "img_size": { "w": 1200, "h": 1609 }, "people": [ { "age": 26, <--- they need to re-calibrate that and make it x3 "gender": -87, "mood": 21, "clothingcolors": [ "#996666", "#aa7766", "#bb8877" ], "ethnicity": { "african": 17, <--- wow!!! "asian": 8, <--- wow!!! "caucasian": 65, <--- for real!!!!! "hispanic": 7 <--- wow!!! }, "emotions": { "happiness": 0, "surprise": 4, <--- even HE can't believe he's POTUS "anger": 76, <--- not surprised at all "disgust": 0, "fear": 6, "sadness": 4 <--- #SAD
- bpicolo 9y ago> they need to re-calibrate that and make it x3 They guessed 39 for me (I'm 25). The age bit seems not so accurate
- jswo3901 9y agoㅇ
- bartkappenburg 9y agoI've tested it a few times and it's indecisive on my gender and age (depends if I'm smiling, angle etc etc). Microsoft's service is much more consistent and accurate (I've tested the same images...): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
- ge96 9y agoTry it but first take some clay and apply it all over your face that's skin-tone... then use that as your face ha.
- mixedbit 9y agoI was very unhappy to discover that shoes now often have RFIDs built into soles. This + anti-theft RFIDs readers that are already deployed by the entry of most stores can allow to easily assign unique ids to shoppers.
- hawski 9y agoWould putting my newly bought shoes into a microwave be a good countermeasure?
- glubGlub 9y agoNext month: new shoe regulations require the use of materials that melt or burn when microwaved.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoNah, they won't need to push that hard. "Warranty void when microwaved" will most likely be enough.
- imgabe 9y agoI've never made a warranty claim for shoes, so that shouldn't be a problem.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoMe neither (too lazy for that), but I know they are used and abused by people too. This leads to funny cases I heard of like a company specifying that some shoes are for "walking", not for "running", and refusing to refund them if you admit to running in them.
- kebman 9y agoYou guys need Norwegian consumer protection...
- tluyben2 9y agoI take my glasses off, but with exactly the same expression and position; 15 years younger, suddenly a lot African(?) and very happy.
- smoyer 9y agoFearful with my glasses on and angry with them off - I'm sitting here while my morning coffee is steeping so I was expecting sleepy!
- Shivetya 9y agoI will be honest, I have no real problems with this. Then again I enjoyed some of the concepts for advertising shown in Minority Report which did feature ads which could identify you. the idea of collecting who looked at your display is invaluable. It would be beneficial for both government and ad agency. Ad agency is obvious but government could learn if displays present information people want and it was presented in a manner to catch their attention. The negative aspects of government use could be limited through privacy laws and such.
- kebman 9y agoThen new Hitler (Erdogan) enters office, and starts using said device to deport infidels like it's 1915.
- rpeden 9y agoIndeed. This isn't new. It's everywhere. The cameras retailers use with their surveillance systems are coming with facial recognition built in now. [1] And lots of retailers, banks, etc, are using systems that track people's visits across multiple locations. [2] You'll see a lot of these systems being sold as fraud/loss prevention solutions. The reason for this is that it's a relatively easy sell this way - customers can count how many thieves they've caught this way to easily determine the ROI they're getting on the system. Once the systems are in place, it's relatively easy to start using them for marketing related purposes. Not all uses of systems like these are necessarily unethical. Consider a case where you want to set up a rule like 'if the average lineup length at the checkouts exceeds 5 people, call backup cashiers'. The problem is that once you have something like this in place, it's very tempting for company execs to want to use the data for legal but less than ethical purposes. [1] https://www.axis.com/ca/en/solutions-by-application/facial-recognition https://www.axis.com/ca/en/solutions-by-application/facial-r... [2] https://www.facefirst.com/solutions/face-recognition-predictive-analytics/ https://www.facefirst.com/solutions/face-recognition-predict...
- fps 9y agoJust yesterday I was hearing news of how most of the retail giants and lots of smaller retail stores are going out of business due to competition from ecommerce. If that means the end of practices like this, then good riddance.
- clarkmoody 9y agoPerhaps, but it simply means the survivors will become more desperate to gain an edge. We've seen this exact behavior with online news sources cramming more and more ads and trackers into websites.
- z2600 9y agoBut, aren't ecommerce sites collecting this information and more from your browsing? I don't think it's possible to say one is much better than the other, just that we expect tracking online, not in the real world.
- kimburgess 9y agoWoah, so this got a bit of interest. To be honest I'm a little surprised this seems to be news to the HN crowd. I feel a little bad about calling out one API provider specifically, so here's a bunch more: https://www.kairos.com/ https://www.kairos.com/ https://skybiometry.com/ https://skybiometry.com/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/emotion/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... http://www.affectiva.com/ http://www.affectiva.com/ http://www.crowdemotion.co.uk/ http://www.crowdemotion.co.uk/ http://emovu.com/e/ http://emovu.com/e/ https://www.faceplusplus.com/ https://www.faceplusplus.com/ Face tracking, emotional analytics and vision based demographics analysis is a pretty huge industry. There's a entire spectrum of uses for this tech, from the altruistic (psychology labs, humans factors research), to the well, not.
- danek 9y agoTo be honest this is news to me and I lurk on hn every day :-/ I thought Minority Report was still a few years away... Thanks for the links, this stuff is both fascinating and scary.
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- jedberg 9y agoAmazon too: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ Sentiment analysis for everyone!
- wingworks 9y agoYep, Microsoft also offers much the same services. Works surprisingly well too. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
- 9y ago
- custos 9y agoWearing a baseball cap makes me invisible to their scan...
- lawless123 9y agohaha, i did something like this in college for a project, it was confined to only emotions though and used images skimmed from google to train it. Maybe i should try to sell it..
- Grollicus 9y ago> Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched, analysed and optimised for I don't believe this. This kind of advertisement in public would be illegal in germany as it is mass surveillance.
- fixermark 9y agoGermany is an outlier; their history with the Nazis makes the country unusually conservative about anything that could be abused for mass-surveillance purposes. Not that this is a bad thing---being able to think differently like this is one of the positives of having countries!---but relative to the rest of the world, what Germany considers "surveillance" is unusual and sometimes surprising.
- kobeya 9y agoI think East Germany is probably the anti-surveillance sentiment more than 70 year old history.
- kefka 9y agoI also have my own facial recognition open sourced as well. https://gitlab.com/crankylinuxuser/uWho https://gitlab.com/crankylinuxuser/uWho Runs on CPU only, realtime 1280x720 @ 15 fps. Is it creepy? Sure. But anyone can run it. I was looking at a rewrite to work in CLI with a web interface instead. But the core loop is the magic part that makes everything work nicely.
- tzs 9y agoThat demo is amusing. I did a Google image search for "N year old faces" for N = 5, 9, 10 and 14, and eliminated results where the accompanying text did not confirm the age, and then gave some of the remaining ones to it. It was always at least 10 years too old on its guess for these children. It got the gender right maybe 3/4 of the time. I also tried it on a few internet porn images. It looks like it is definitely only relying on the face for determining gender, or it thinks that there are a lot of women with hairy flat chests and large penises...
- amelius 9y agoIsn't it illegal in most countries to put cameras in public places? Especially if they don't contain a warning?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoNo one's going to go to jail for their first offence of putting a in an advertising sign. What's the worst that could happen? The local advertising regulator will order you to meet the regulatory standards or remove the cameras, but give you x number of weeks to act per unit installed.