The algorithm of Facebook recognizes you even if you do not see your face

The algorithm of Facebook recognizes you even if you do not see your face. Facebook is working on an algorithm that analyzes the distinctive characteristics of a person to recognize his identity. Terrifying in terms of privacy, but the technology could also have positive implications.

Thanks to the evolution of the vision algorithms computers today are able to recognize a person by analyzing the data of a digital image that depicts the face. The software is not yet effective in cases where the face is covered or not clearly visible, and this is the limit that wants to take down Facebook. The company is carrying out work on the improvement of its algorithm so that it can recognize a person even without seeing his face.

The software will analyze it Facebook not only the face of a user, but also his hairstyle, the clothes, the body and the pose used in the shot. The algorithms of facial recognition are apart from a few cases extremely effective, to the point that they are widely used on the internet, and more. In some cases the technologies of today are practically unusable, especially when the subject is not in a classic pose, and in which the face is not completely visible.

This is the challenge of laboratories Facebook led by Yann LeCun, that allow the software to have the same ability to recognize a man giving the car the same degree of perception of the surrounding environment. The same LeCun has specified: ” There are a lot of clues that we use. The people of the unique aspects, even if you look from behind. For example, you can recognize Mark Zuckerberg very easily because he always wears a gray T-shirt “.

The research team selected 40,000 public photos on Flickr, some of them with other subjects it openly with his face partially recognizable, giving in to their pasta sophisticated neural network. The algorithm was able to recognize the identity of the subject in 83% of cases, with a reliability extremely high. Do not miss the usual controversy in terms of privacy of users: an algorithm so reliable it may allow the identification strangers clicks.

But on the contrary, an algorithm which identifies a person unaware of the shot, may help him discover that his photo was posted online. The system, recognizing, may send a notification allowing it to locate the picture, and possibly eliminate it if not to his liking.