Yamaha facial recognition system spots gender, age
Facial recognition systems may raise hackles among privacy advocates — especially when they're used for law enforcement — but they continue to improve, and developers remain on the lookout for new ways to use them. Yamaha has unveiled a new system that the company says can recognize whether someone is male or female, and estimate their age. Accuracy is rated at 88% for gender (which Yamaha says is on par with the human eye) and 77% for age. The company says the technology could be used by retail establishments to profile customers and guide them to appropriate products. We can only imagine the more nefarious purposes this could be put to, not to mention the embarrassing mistakes it could help avoid if incorporated into camphones and used by denizens of certain dark, crowded nightspots.
