When I blogged… (Amvona.com)
Hate privacy? Today’s your day!
Have you ever gone somewhere and noticed video cameras and think, “I hope I wasn’t doing something stupid.” I’m not talking about the ones in WalMart; those are totally fake (hey, don’t come crying to me if you get caught). I’m talking about Big Brother, that horrible movie Eagle Eye, and photo software created to identify your face. Yea, that’s right, there’s a new service that can actually recognize you as an individual. Be afraid!
Well, don’t be too afraid. We all know how Facebook has an application to tag your buddies. Just click, type, and hit “done.” BAM! Your buddy is totally going to hate you after posting that picture of him falling asleep on the toilet. Oh look, now it’s on Failblog.org! Nice.
That’s beside the point though. Face.com has created “Photo Finder” and a sidekick called “Photo Tagger.” If you couldn’t already guess, they both identify and tag photos. Photo Tagger is an application exclusively made to work with Facebook.
Here’s how they work:
First, the software scans the selected photos or album and frames each face. Then, the software searches government data banks to find a match (actually this sentence is a complete lie, but wouldn’t that be crazy!) Anyways, the user must then tag the identified face and presto! The software will recognize and tag matching faces.
Photo Finder finally went live after scanning over 1 billion photos and identifying 400 million faces. Photo Tagger followed suit this past week. These services are only in the Alpha stage, so don’t set your standards too high. If you’re identified as Fighto, don’t be offended.
Thus far, the product has received positive feedback with the exception of one user I found on Photo Finder’s Facebook Page. Reviewer Jake says, “It found me in most of the pictures within MY OWN photo albums.” This user is obviously upset that this service has successfully identified him which brings me back to privacy.
While facial recognition software is convenient and pretty awesome, is it just the next step to Big Brother? Employers, law enforcement, and other entities have already been using Facebook to scope out people around the world. I guess my question is: how will the internet community take Photo Finder? What do you think?
