A facial recognition app that can identify strangers from a photograph has been created by a British entrepreneur.
Facezam can identify people by matching a photo of them with their Facebook profile. All users have to do is take a picture of someone on the street and run it through the app, which will tell them who it thinks the person in the photo is.
"Facezam could be the end of our anonymous societies," said Jack Kenyon, founder of Facezam. "Users will be able to identify anyone within a matter of seconds, which means privacy will no longer exist in public society."
OOOOOOkay, red flags ALL over the place. I feel this is going to make a whole bunch of people upset. This brings social media stalking to a whole new level. Cool idea OR very creepy app that should never see the light of day?
"The app, which will launch on iOS on March 21, has been tested on more than 10,000 images to date with a 70 per cent accuracy.
Unfortunately there is no way for the privacy conscious to remove themselves from the app, which can use its identification software on anyone with a Facebook profile.
Its accuracy does however drop to 55 per cent when a person's face is obscured in either the photo of them or in their Facebook profile image. Factors that affect its success include obscuring hair, sunglasses, a large hat or odd angle, Kenyon said."
Oh, that's comforting. So everyone has until March 21st to change their Facebook profile to include sunglasses or a large hat to almost not be recognized by this thing.