Blown To Bits

IPhoto Sports Facial Recognition

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 by Harry Lewis

I have been saying recently that my nightmare scenario is free, web-based facial recognition software. It would mean that someone could say “this is Harry” (tagging a single photo of me) and then “Please go to Flickr and find other photos in which Harry appears.” Those would include both other photos taken and uploaded by members of my family, and also completely unrelated photos taken by people I don’t even know, who were photographing something else and happened to catch me in the background. Say, someone snapping his own family at a restaurant in San Juan, while I just happened to be dining with my Puerto Rican girlfriend at the next table, when I told my wife I was going to New York on business. Oops!

Well, the new release of Apple’s IPhoto is getting awfully close to making this a reality. It will do tagging in your own album anyway based on face recognition. My nightmare scenario can’t be far behind.

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