Facial verification and recognition software is crucial for security and identity protection
Several stories last month reported that facial recognition technology used by UK police was “staggeringly inaccurate”.
Yet in the last six months, multinational financial services firms, such as ING and Rabobank, have started using automatic face matching to replace in-person identity checking.
The question is, how reliable is this technology?
Read more: Facebook will ask Europeans if it can use facial recognition tech on them
To begin with, these are in fact two different technologies. They solve different issues, and don’t experience the same problems. Trying to spot a suspect in a crowd is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Any of the world’s 7bn inhabitants could look like a suspect on CCTV. The purpose of facial recognition here is to help officers thin down this haystack. It’s therefore hardly surprising that this recent media furore set unnecessary alarm bells ringing.
There is, however, a question of personal privacy to be addressed. These systems help discover where people are, and if they were in a specific location. But what they don’t do is confirm if people are happy to be identified in this manner. Our police and society at large benefit, not the individual.
Now, let’s get another thing clear. When a person’s ID documents are verified against a selfie of that individual, something quite different is happening. This is not recognition. Here, facial verification tools are being used to determine whether a customer is in fact who they claim to be – just as humans would at border control.
Modern machine learning is already very effective at doing this. In fact, it is about 100 times more accurate than the trained border staff assessed for a study conducted in 2014 at the Sydney Passport Office.
If we – the public – are to trust one another digitally, verification technology will be a critical means for sustaining faith. Customers would benefit from a faster, simpler, and more reliable service, which also means we can do away with laborious in-person ID checks. From a privacy standpoint, there are no issues.
Facial verification is incrementally replacing such in-person checks. Its ability to onboard new customers, authenticate returning users, and replace passwords means it is increasingly adopted by governments and banks alike. Performing these checks in the cloud prevents device limitations getting in the way, too. Verifying a person’s face rather than their paper trail is the most secure way to confirm their identity.
Nowadays, it is easier to create fake imagery than ever before. Free apps are able to turn a photo into a moving avatar that blinks, speaks, and gestures. These convincing spoofs pose a threat that we can only overcome with remote verification.
Whether it’s crossing a border or accessing a bank account, we have to be certain that there isn’t just a dog with an iPad over its face trying to steal someone’s identity. An individual’s legitimate presence needs to be confirmed, and their identity protected. Thankfully advancements in facial verification enable us to do precisely that.
Read more: DEBATE: Should we be worried about facial recognition?