Future tech: A mobile device employing facial recognition to identify the occupants of a photograph and automatically retrieve information about them via the web.
Type: Mobile application.
Tagline: Shazam meets photos.
What's around today:
- Camera enabled smartphone - photos on the go and the internet readily accessible
- Facebook - the largest database of tagged photographs of individuals in the world
- Picasa - in version 3.5 Google implemented facial recognition. It can identify people without concern of age, sunglasses, hats, hair, shadow, or direction they're facing, tag them, and sync them with your Google contacts.
Everyday scenario:
Take a photo of a new contact and their name, email, and phone number is saved to your phone/contacts along with the location and time you met. Your face is your always available business card.
The future freaks me out scenario:
At a bar, feeling confident, looking to make your move . Snap a photo, discreetly, from across the room. Facebook profile retrieved. Looks like she's got a German Shepard. Conversation topic acquired.
What's preventing this today:
- Though facial recognition has taken tremendous strides it's not perfect and does a better job of identifying a smaller pool of faces, with 300 million users on Facebook and counting computing time would take days with lots of possible misidentifications
- Privacy issues abound
Estimated arrival: 5 years, 2014
0 ++'s:
Post a Comment