Facebook adds face detection, still can't identify books
By Tim Stevens 
posted July 2nd 2010 8:08AM
posted July 2nd 2010 8:08AM
Over 100 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, making the social networking site something of a clearinghouse for random holiday snaps. Of course, those holiday snaps quite often contain people, and its in tagging those people that the whole process of adding photos to Facebook slows down a bit -- finding faces, drawing boxes, typing names, etc. Those first two steps are now in the process of being automated thanks to recent Facebook acquisition Divvyshot. Facebook will now identify faces in your photos after you upload them, automatically, just like any 'ol cheap compact shooter can do. Sadly it won't identify who that face is yet (you still need to type in a name), but this simple addition should make tagging much, much easier. However, we're still waiting for Google Street View's auto face blurring technology to make an appearance before we start uploading the greatest moments from our last vacation.
I guess this gives the people who were worried about Google's systems putting keyword ads next to their email something different to fret about.
This was part of http://www.orkut.com from past 2 years. It gets annoying though when empty boxes start popping on the faces every time you open an image and gets worse if more people are there in the picture. The boxes stay on the face for like 3 sec or so and one has to wait for it to disappear slowly to see the picture clearly. Unfortunately Orkut did not have the option to disable it.
PS: Orkut is another social networking site pretty famous in the South American and Indian subcontinent
Facebook adds face detection, still can't upload pictures.
@MeisterDon
I think they need to blur out a lot more than faces in those vacation photos...
I can't beloved you would go to BadaBing Josh!
Facebook servers just got a whole lot warmer :)
You can already do this in windows live photo and then click to upload.
This "face detection" feature just has joined the list of the reasons why I quit Facebook a month ago.
@wsansewjs
I HATE HATE HATE face detection too! ... but out of curiousity, why would this be a factor in anyone quitting Facebook? :/
@Barguast
Face detection is another step closer to eliminate your full privacy. Imagine different photos are harvested and analyized by face detection and add to database without the consent of the victims.
@wsansewjs
If that's a concern of someone, then perhaps they shouldn't be uploading photos of themselves to the internet in the first place?
I think people can get very carried away with these big brother scenarios.
@Barguast All of the photos of me on facebook aren't uploaded by me...
@Wezzuz
You sir, is exactly correct.
@Wezzuz
But they can only be tagged by your friends, and can be un-tagged (permanently) by you. If someone is worried about having their personal stuff on the internet, then why on earth would that person be using a social network? It is what it is.
@Barguast
"why would this be a factor in anyone quitting Facebook?"
PERVERTS!
Seriously though, I don't know. I never had an account and never will.
@wsansewjs
This doesn't recognize faces, it simply recognizes that there IS a face there, eliminating the need to place the box around the face. You simply tell facebook whose face it is and you may choose to leave it blank.
This worries me a little bit. This technology can easily be used with data mining techniques. Image the amount information that a corporation or worse yet the government can collect combining this with the social networking database. I am actually more afraid of the government using this information then a corporation. A corporation doesn't have the power to throw you in jail. The direction the country in going in and the disregard for the constitution by government officials. I am afraid our privacy is quickly evaporating.
@linenoise
What are you afraid of exactly? It's to assist with tagging photos, not to inform MIBs of your unauthorised trip to the park.
@Barguast I guess the people who warned against Hugo Chavez of Venezuela were worried for nothing too. But of course that would never happen here.
@linenoise
... what's the Venezuelan political system got to do with Facebook tagging? Forgive my ignorance.
@linenoise The data that there are faces in pictures? OMG
@RichardLawler Really, you guys can not connect the dots on this? The issue is not with using it as an easy way to tag photos but the technology itself is very powerful and can be easily abused. Here is an example. Lets take a country, I don't know say Valenzuela, China, North Korea, Iran or Cuba. Say you take your picture with some one or just in the background at a government protesting event. You both get tagged in the photo. From there its very easy to create a database that create associations with those individuals weather or not they are on your friends list or not. Say one of those individuals makes a political statement the government doesn't like or commits a crime. Or they just don't like what is going on in the picture. You are now associated with those individuals and may be getting a little extra attention.
Here's another example. You go to a party and some dumb ass takes a picture of themselves doing drugs and posts it to face book. You might have just been in the background or not even in the same picture but in another picture from the same party. I am sure most people would not want to be associated with a picture like that.
Here is another example. What happens if you were at an event such as a strip club not doing anything illegal but can be embarrassing and you are in the background of a photo someone else has taken. You get tagged in the photo.
From there it is a simple mater to do a search query for all the pictures that you are in. Facebook might even enable this as a search option. "Find pictures that this individual is in." Then guess what, all the photos that you might not want posted or didn't even knew existed but someone else has posted with you in it will show up.
And we know how facebook has a rock solid track record when it comes to privacy issues.
this has been around for some time, imo. i noticed that when i wanted to set some pic as my DP, the crop region automatically focussed on my face, no matter what part of the picture it was in.
i suppose they announced it now just because they have perfected it. out of aplha testing :)
@boxieblue I was trying to figure out how this is news, facebook has done this for me for a couple months at least, I didn't even realize it was a new feature, I figured it was always there, I just only recently started using photos.
This is not good think about it...
orkut, the Google social network that only works for brazilians, already had this feature last year.
If you can get any of their posting mechanisms to work, this is great, but they all fail on different devices from time to time.
Awww rats...why do the algos keep mistaking me for Brad Pitt??? ;-)
I for one look forward to not spending a half hour tagging every time I upload a batch of photos.
Oh jeez, it only detects peoples' faces, not who they are. FRANKIE SAYS RELAX.
This title made me lol for some reason.
@A25i You hush your mouth, Pedobear is all about Bebo.
There better be a way for you to disable auto-tagging or else I'm outta here.
I'm pretty sure that the google maps automatic face blurring is in motion. It's streetview car made it's rounds here in town a couple months ago and I noticed faces and license plates blurred.
I'm waiting for boobs detection feature.
uhhh yeah, my jailbroken iPWN 4GS can already to that. Uh huh, there's an app for that. What facebook can't, iPWN can...........
I hope this somehow one day syncs with Picasa's face detection.