facial recognition

Facial recognition refers to image processing systems that are able to isolate faces in images or video and then identify who the person is, using some form of database of faces. This can be very useful, for example, in naming family members on a personal photo album, or preventing a terrorist attack base on CCTV at an airport. However, there are also worries about issues of privacy and potential misue by authoritarian governments. These worries have been made more severe given that many facial recognition systems exhibit levels of bias often being less effective for darker skins and hence more likely to erroneously flag a black person as a suspected criminal.