Google Builds Biometric Models of Celebrity Faces 56
theodp writes "Want the latest pics of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Sarah and Bristol Palin? Prince Harry? Britney Spears? So do the Enquiring minds at Google! On Thursday, the USPTO published Google's patent application for Automatically Mining Person Models of Celebrities for Visual Search Applications, in which the search giant describes how it used spectral analysis to construct a database of 'highly accurate biometric models' to allow it to recognize the faces of 30,000 celebrities wherever they might appear. Included in the patent drawings is Plot 104 of '141 images in Barack Obama's face model', which Google notes is much less 'polluted' than Plot 102 of '71 images in Britney Spears' face model.' Watch out, celebrity stalkers — there's a new kid in town!"
Two thoughts (Score:3)
2) When is this getting into Picasa?
Re:Two thoughts (Score:4, Informative)
Picasa, the desktop app, already does facial recognition. You need to train it because most of us are not celebrities. I guess it would be trivial for Google to include their celeb database, so Picasa can automagivally tag you if you add a photo of yourself posing with a celebrity.
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And if they added this to Picasa, I'd finally have an easy way to sort my porn collection.
Re:Two thoughts (Score:4, Funny)
And if they added this to Picasa, I'd finally have an easy way to sort my porn collection.
Oh, so that's what they mean by facial recognition.
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Bravo. *slow-clap*
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Auto-photobomb detection? Brilliant!
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My Panasonic Lumix GF2 has facial recognition too. Need training but then it will automatically tag photos you take. Might be handy for paparazzi.
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Actually the web portion had facial recognition before it was added to the application.
Way cool :-)
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How is privacy over, may I ask? This still has a way to go before it can be used in real-time analysis of CCTV footage. And even then, you can just put on a Guy Fawkes mask like V (purposely not anonymous), or one of the Anonymizer Masks of Doktor Sleepless, and presto! anonymity.
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It works pretty well at Halloween.
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This tool could be used to find your face anywhere on the net. While granted this would rock for stalkers, it could be used by employers to find you on facebook, even under a completely different name. Or the police upon seeing you doing something illegal in a photo (but not having your name). Suspicious spouses, and so on. Plus if we start to see citizen justice like over in China it could become far worse then we imagine. PLUS what happens with the really close false positives?
And they're not there with C
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Oh, great, now we're all going to have to shave, thanks a lot.
What about celebrity hunters? (Score:2)
Would we end up with less celebrities in the world or would the selection pressure only serve to bring us attention whores who are more prolific, neurotic, and annoying?
That was a quick about face... (Score:3)
How is this different from the facial recognition that has been done in things like iPhoto for years.
Stranger is that just yesterday Google called facebooks "facial recognition" creepy and said it was something that google would likely not do and that some other company would have to "cross that line".
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How is this different from the facial recognition that has been done in things like iPhoto for years.
Oh, oh! I know this one!
The difference is that iPhoto runs on my computer and keeps its database in my computer; while Google's database is, well, not in my computer.
-dZ.
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Re:That was a quick about face..."
I see what you did there
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It seems like they are differentiating between celebrities whose image is public and non-celebrities who have a greater expectation of privacy. They are already failing at the latter though because anyone with a somewhat unique name is in danger of their face being returned in the image search results on Google.
Minority Report is Here! (Score:1)
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Awesome site..
Any more like that one?
New google service (Score:2)
Your past becomes visible (again) (Score:2)
All those security cameras out there are recording everyone. And a lot of that footage is retained.
With this kind of technology all of that past footage could be scanned and a dossier of past whereabouts created.
(Yes, I know that our mobile phones are already reporting on our whereabouts, but at least you can turn a phone off.)
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That's not generally the case. Footage tends to be retained for a month or some fixed period of time, unless there's a law mandating a longer retention time or their is something particularly interesting about a segment of tape.
The big problem had been that if you retained tape for more than a few months the chances of actually finding anything useful was pretty remote, but with this new technology there's the possibility of rendering much older sections of tape much more useful.
But, in general security doe
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If the face extraction is good enough, it can probably be used to cut way down on the amount of video that actually needs to be stored.
Old News (Score:1)
Didn't Better Off Ted do this? (Score:2)
"With this technology, we have finally defeated privacy!"
Wish I could find the clip on YouTube...
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I miss Better Off Ted. Why do good shows get cancelled?
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Bad ratings.
I bet you were expecting a more complex answer.
I do wonder if they still base all of these decisions on Nielsen ratings alone. Seems pretty silly these days to use that antiquated system. I would hope they factor in things like TIVO data, cable OnDemand data, channel website episode views, Hulu, etc...
Better Off Ted was one of three shows I'd turn on ABC for (the others being Castle and Wipeout).
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I do wonder if they still base all of these decisions on Nielsen ratings alone.
Ratings are definitely a large factor, but the cost of the show per rating point is the most important thing. So, a cheap show can do relatively poorly and still survive (which is why "reality" programming is so prevalent). In the same way, if the show is produced by the network, the ratings can be much lower without cancellation. This is because the secondary markets like syndication and DVD will also put money into the network pocket.
To be honest, though, what I have seen lately is that if a show is no
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Typically it's because they were dumb enough to sign with Fox.
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Biometric Models of Celebrity Feces! (Score:1)
No, thanks! (Score:1)
"Want the latest pics of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Sarah and Bristol Palin? Prince Harry? Britney Spears?
No!
Not that it couldn't be useful. Anyone up for writing a CelebBlock plugin?
Huh? (Score:1)
How about something _useful_? (Score:3)
Sigh. More celeb obsession.
Google: why not develop something useful, like general purpose plant recognition, for example - so I can take a photo of a plant I want to identify and find information on? Or a building? Or other objects? Useful things, not yet more celebrity obsession...
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Not as complex as you were suggesting per se, but searching by image is already here. I've used it a few times myself and like it so far.
Tit Recognition (Score:2)
53 comments, noone mentioned Rule 34 yet (Score:2)
I'm surprised.