What’s in store for the future of facial recognition technology? While it’s considered a cutting edge, futuristic technology, facial recognition has actually been in development since the 1960s, but hasn’t been in mainstream use. But until recently it wasn’t considered very reliable, or even particularly practical, as our security threats were not not as sophisticated as they are now. In decades past, a simple signature or pin code was enough to keep information secure. With the huge technological leap had in the past decade though, and the subsequent need for improved security, facial recognition is now considered the highest level of biometric authentication. It’s still not without its flaws in the real world however; When Apple launched Face ID as a feature of the iPhone X, people quickly realized that it could be fooled with a simple photograph, or indeed someone who looked similar to the user. In 2017, it even emerged that Face ID could not differentiate between multiple Chinese faces! Amazon had a similarly embarrassing scenario, where their “state of the art” system, Rekognition, wrongly identified 28 US Congress members as known criminals. Still, tech companies are keen to continue developing and refining their systems, as the future demands dependable facial recognition technology. It’s not just law enforcement and national security that will improve, but operations like personal online banking, home security, confidential contracts, and crypto currency wallets will all be made safer by facial recognition technology.
