Facial Recognition: The Controversy's Child

The recent wrongful arrest of Robert Williams has once again bolstered the voices asking for a ban on facial recognition technology. Facial recognition is a biometric technique, which compares facial features with pictures in a database to verify a person. However, the technology has always been surrounded with controversies, as it is considered invasive to privacy and is known to make mistakes identifying people, especially when it comes to Asian and black people.

An exponentially growing industry

The market adoption of facial recognition technology is growing rapidly across the world. It is estimated that the market will grow to $7 billion by 2024 in the US. In India, the market is expected to grow to $4 billion by 2024. This exponential growth is driven by its wide adoption across sectors including social media, airports, banks, retail, and mobile phone companies. However, its biggest adoption is probably as a surveillance tool by law enforcement agencies across the world to identify and nab criminals.

Risks around facial recognition

This brings in the grave concerns around the invasion of privacy. The simple act of tagging friends on social media platforms exposes them to facial recognition technology—all without their knowledge. Since facial recognition technology is largely used to monitor people covertly, it has time and again found itself surrounded by controversies. To make matters worse, there isn't adequate regulation mandating the companies prying on people to respect the privacy of their users.

Then there are risks to facial recognition databases getting hacked. Breached databases can place crucial biometric information in the hands of cyber criminals who can use it for many malicious activities.

Facial recognition technology uses software and algorithms that are prone to mistakes and mismatching pictures with incorrect people—the latest case being that of Robert Williams. He was arrested for a crime he didn't commit and faced humiliation because an algorithm made a mistake! The arrest was made on the basis of surveillance footage that a store—that encountered a theft—sent to the police. The police ran the footage through its facial recognition database, which matched it incorrectly with William's picture from his old driving license.

Tech giants suspend use of facial recognition technology

The incidence has sparked outrage against the use of facial recognition technology, especially as a surveillance tool. As a fallout of the recent protests, Amazon has suspended the police use of its software for a year. IBM had earlier announced that it would stop selling its general-purpose software as well as end the research work. Google, too, has suspended the use of the technology till further regulations are announced, while Microsoft is advocating for government regulation around the use of the technology.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached on LinkedIn.