A Chinese company reportedly created a photo with such high resolution, you can zoom from thousands of meters away to see people’s facial expressions

Bigpixel You might call this the pinnacle of high-resolution images. It is the brainchild of a setup called Jinkun Tech, or Bigpixel Technology Corporation, and it was taken from atop the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai. The photo resolution, which is the toughest part to wrap one’s mind around, is reportedly 195 gigapixels. A megapixel […]

Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

Enlarge / A public notice of a previous Met Police facial recognition test. (credit: Metropolitan Police) London’s Metropolitan Police Service will be testing facial recognition technology in a handful of locations across the central core of the British capital on both Monday and Tuesday for eight hours each day. This trial marks the seventh such […]

Taylor Swift concert used facial recognition tech to identify stalkers

You’re probably used to the presence of facial recognition cameras at airports and other transport hubs, but what about at concerts? That’s the step Taylor Swift’s team took at her May 18th show at the Rose Bowl, in a bid to identify her stalkers. According to Rolling Stone, the camera was hidden inside a display […]

Intel’s AI wheelchair can be controlled by facial expressions

Motorized wheelchairs are traditionally controlled by a joystick or sensors attached to the user’s body, but now innovation in artificial intelligence is helping severely disabled people drive their chairs with their facial expressions. Working in partnership with Intel, Brazil-based Hoobox Robotics has created the Wheelie 7, a piece of AI-leveraging kit that allows disabled people […]

Congress: Amazon didn’t give “sufficient answers” about facial recognition

Enlarge / Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, in May 2018. (credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images) Seven members of the House of Representatives and one United States senator have now sent a second letter to Amazon’s CEO, asking for more clarification about the company’s use of facial-recognition technology. Although two House members in the […]

Chinese facial recognition system confuses bus ad with a jaywalker

There are many criticisms you can level at China’s growing reliance on facial recognition, including its absolute faith in technology: what happens if there’s a false positive? Unfortunately, we just saw an example of that in action. Police in the city of Ningbo have taken corrective action after the facial recognition system at a crosswalk […]

Surveillance with a smile: Biometrics firms seek to incentivize facial recognition

Operating on the gradual model of Google and Facebook, biometrics companies are plotting a slow rollout of facial recognition technology, barbed with incentives to hook customers and distract them from the demise of privacy. Arenas, airports and stores are already adopting facial recognition software to identify criminals, from shoplifters to potential terrorists – so marketing […]

Heathrow launches airport-wide facial recognition tech – but will it affect your privacy?

Heathrow Airport will be launching the hub’s first end-to-end biometrics trial next summer, bringing facial recognition to each point of the departing passenger’s journey. It will be the first time Heathrow has carried out a full-scale rollout of the new technology and will mean the London airport will have the world’s largest deployment of biometric […]

TSA outlines its plans for facial recognition on domestic flights

The Transportation Security Administration is determined to make facial recognition and other biometrics a regular part of the airport experience, and it now has a roadmap for that expansion. The effort will start by teaming with Customs and Border Protection on biometric security for international travel, followed by putting the technology into use for TSA […]