Earlier today Shel Israel (@ShelIsrael) entertained Twitter with a dig at Facebook.
“It is now seven days since Facebook has done anything to offend customers. Keep it up, guys,” he wrote. But if the rumors are true, another privacy battle may just spring up in the near future. Fast Company predicted today that Facebook’s next addition would be a face detection software followed closely by automatic, privacy threatening face recognition.
In a recent blog post, Sam Odio of Facebook wrote, “This might surprise you, but within the photos product most people spend their time uploading, browsing and tagging photos. As a result, we’re working to improve your experience in each of those.”
According to Facebook, some people will see a test version of the new, nearly automatic tagging abilities integrated into their photo experience. It will supposedly look something like the photo below.
But that’s not the only place where Facebook photo recognition is receiving buzz. About a week ago Face.com announced that they would be using their photo technology on Facebook, meaning the app will scan a group of photos and automatically tag previously untagged people with an orange outline. The algorithm for Face.com’s face recognition software has been in development since 2007 and it’s supposedly amazingly accurate.
Face.com is battling the potential privacy implications of face recognition by restricting the power of their face recognition software within the app. Only the people who run the app can see what it has achieved.
While specific release dates haven’t been named, Face.com hopes to go live later this year with the ultimate goal of scanning every single photo on Facebook. In the meantime 100 alpha invites are available here for those interested in trying it out.
