Facial Recognition Technology Is More Commonplace

SAN FRANCISCO—Dozens of databases full of people’s faces are being compiled without their knowledge, according to the New York Times. They are being created by companies and researchers and are often shared around the world, in what has become a vast ecosystem fueling the spread of facial recognition technology.

The databases are pulled together with images from social networks, photo websites, dating services, such as OkCupid, and cameras placed in public places. While there is no precise count of the databases, privacy activists note that repositories have been built by Microsoft, Stanford University and others, with one holding more than 10 million images while another had more than two million.

The databases are important in the race to create leading-edge facial recognition systems. This technology learns how to identify people by analyzing as many digital pictures as possible using “neural networks,” which are complex mathematical systems that require vast amounts of data to build pattern recognition.

Tech giants, such as Facebook and Google, have most likely amassed the largest face data sets, which they do not distribute, according to research papers. But other companies and universities have widely shared their image collections with researchers, governments and private enterprises worldwide for training artificial intelligence, according to academics, activists and public papers.

Collecting facial images has been going on for more than a decade, and the databases are merely one part of developing facial recognition technology. But people often have no idea that their faces are in the databases. While names are typically not attached to the photos, individuals can be recognized because each face is unique to a person.

Questions about the data sets are rising because the technologies that they have enabled are now being questioned. Documents released last week reveal that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials employed facial recognition technology to scan motorists’ photos to identify undocumented immigrants. The FBI also has used such systems to compare driver’s license and visa photos against the faces of suspected criminals, according to the Government Accountability Office.

There is no oversight of the data sets. Activists are angered by the possibility that people’s likenesses have been used to build ethically questionable technology and that the images could be misused. At least one face database created in the United States was shared with a company in China with links to ethnic profiling of the country’s minority Uighur Muslims.

Recently, some companies and universities, including Microsoft and Stanford, removed their face data sets from the internet amid privacy concerns. But since the images were so well distributed, they are most likely still being used, researchers and activists believe.

Microsoft researchers claim to have created one of the biggest face data sets. The collection, called MS Celeb, included more than 10 million images of more than 100,000 people. MS Celeb began as a database of celebrities, whose images are considered fair game because they are public figures. But MS Celeb also brought in photos of privacy and security activists, academics and others.

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