Facebook's Face Identification Project Is Accurate 97.25% of the Time 149
kc123 tips news that 'DeepFace,' the software research project created by Facebook engineers to identify people in pictures, is now accurate 97.25% of the time. In other words, it's almost as good at recognizing faces as humans, who are able to determine whether two photos show the same person 97.53% of the time. The article says DeepFace reaches that level of accuracy "regardless of variations in lighting or whether the person in the picture is directly facing the camera." It continues,
"DeepFace processes images of faces in two steps. First it corrects the angle of a face so that the person in the picture faces forward, using a 3-D model of an 'average' forward-looking face. Then the deep learning comes in as a simulated neural network works out a numerical description of the reoriented face. If DeepFace comes up with similar enough descriptions from two different images, it decides they must show the same face. ... The deep-learning part of DeepFace consists of nine layers of simple simulated neurons, with more than 120 million connections between them. To train that network, Facebook’s researchers tapped a tiny slice of data from their company’s hoard of user images—four million photos of faces belonging to almost 4,000 people."
Privacy nutjobs take note (Score:4, Informative)
And It's not like your Facebook ID was issued when you were born, like your SSN or birth certificate. You willingly signed up for the service, so quit complaining about privacy bullshit, or quit using Facebook.
Re:Privacy nutjobs take note (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that person X who has never signed up for Facebook ends up in a picture with someone (Person Y) who did. No one yet knows who Person X is, and Person Y doesn't identify them, and has all the recognition/auto tag features turned off. Good thing too, because Person X looks like they're so drunk they've lost the ability to control their bowels and keep their clothes on properly.
Rinse and repeat.
Remember, facebook still runs the recognition on all photos - they use such information to surface the posts you might be most interested in. If you're in a few photos with Person X (even if unidentified), then Facebook still wants to surface your friends photos with Person X because (quite reasonably) you might be interested in them.
Years late, someone identifies Person X. Now all pictures of Person X can be found by using Person X's name, even though they never signed up for Facebook.
This is a specific case of the general concerns that always come out whenever there's a privacy/facebook story on slashdot. You don't even have to play the game to lose on Facebook.
Re:Privacy nutjobs take note (Score:2, Informative)
Facebook is famous for creating ghost accounts for those who are not registered "yet" but have been tagged or recognized.