Comverse will be releasing an app in which it married social marketing with facial recognition software to create what it is billing as the first ever socially augmented reality tool.
It has also prompted questions about privacy and appropriateness - questions that are becoming more relevant as this technology is more widely deployed in apps.
Linking the Face to a Name
Unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the app takes advantage of Face.com's facial recognition algorithms and its database of images to deliver its friend recognition technology - technology that links a particular face with an appropriate profile, writes Intomobile.
Comverse also billed the application as a tool to be used for dealing with acquaintances, "practically connecting people before they even know each other's names. If you bump into someone who you met before and he or she looks familiar but you can’t remember why, the app will locate that person’s online profile to put a name to the face."
Privacy Issues?
There would appear to be some privacy issues with that sort of functionality, Gizmodo suggested. The app "could be awkward! Especially if you end up being able to access the Facebook profiles of everyone in a bar from when you walk in…Facial recognition is nothing new, but having it at the ready on your phone? Awesome, and hopefully minimally creepy. We'll have a better sense of how it plays once video and images are available."
Face.com CEO Gil Hirsch, however, chimed in after Gizmodo’s first post to assure readers that the acquaintance feature still only applies to people with whom the user is already friends: "We've heard this need from most folks with 500+ "friends", and I'd love to know if you find this useful too. We know that some people get uncomfortable with the idea of facial recognition, but our intent is really to create cool technology that people find useful and can enjoy. We work really hard to help people feel comfortable with our service and always give people the chance to protect their privacy," Hirsch wrote.
Other Facial Recognition Apps
Privacy issues hasn’t appeared to have been a problem with other marketing apps that use facial recognition technology. Mostly apps developed for fun, these include Coke Zero's novelty app for Facebook introduced in December that lets users find their look-alikes on Facebook. Called Coke Zero Facial Profiler, the app uses advanced facial profiling software to match players against a database of 200,000 faces collected by Coke Zero.
To participate, users would grant the profiler app access to their Facebook account via Facebook Connect. The app then searches for the player's photos that he or she has uploaded to their profile. If there are no photos, one can be uploaded to the app. Once a match is found, the user can learn more about his digital doppelganger based on the individual's privacy Facebook profile settings.
Another example is the MirrorMe Facebook Application from Ideonic. By utilizing a questionnaire and photo manipulation techniques, MirrorMe produces a photo of what the user will look like in several years based on his or her lifestyle, according to AllFacebook.
"Upon entering the application, you're asked to pick a photo, and by using some slick Facebook integration, the application presents you with every "Photo of You" in your Facebook profile," writes AllFacebook.
"Once you’ve picked your photo, you explain your location, ethnic origin, age and are then presented with a quiz about your consumption of fruits, alcoholic drinks, illegal drugs and more. Click OK and wait a minute, and ta da, your transformation is complete. You are able to view a split screen image, which is often hilarious, and also the full views."
