Facial Recognition on Facebook (Video)
The Coke Zero Facial Profiler scans uploaded pictures with facial recognition software to find someone who looks like you, but isn’t. While it doesn’t do much besides play facial matchmaker, the application is being toted by CPB as an experiment in social networking, and I have to admit that it’s a great way to waste some time. Still, is it curiosity or just narcissism if you want to meet someone who looks like yourself? Check out the commercial for the Facial Profiler after the break and decide for yourself.
Typical facial recognition (FR) software uses key indicators on your face (nose width, eye spacing, etc) to create a dynamic profile of your features. The Coke version likely runs on the same sort of algorithms that protect Heathrow airport, and are becoming more common insecurity check points around the world. It says something about the advancement of this technology that it is now available as an advertising gimmick on Facebook. As trivial as the application may be, even this version of FR has a limited learning ability to better help it pair one face to another. Eventually higher resolution cameras and better artificial intelligence may allow FR to replace many uses of identification cards . In the next decade FR may synchronize with multimedia digital mobile interfaces to provide us with augmented reality information about the people we meet. The real world could become a physical version of Facebook.
