Facial recognition: top 7 trends (tech, vendors, use cases)

2. Health

Significant advances have been made in this area. 

Thanks to deep learning and face analysis, it is already possible to:

• track a patient's use of medication more accurately
• detect genetic diseases such as DiGeorge syndrome with a success rate of 96.6%
• support pain management procedures.

3. Banking and retail

This area is undoubtedly the one where facial recognition was least expected. And yet, quite possibly, it promises the most.

Know Your Customer (KYC) with facial recognition online will be a hot topic in 2021.

Why? 

Because 64% of primary checking account openings were done online in Q2 2020 ( and 36% in branches) in the United States alone.

Besides, increased mobile usage urges businesses to focus on mobile-first and develop fully mobile user-friendly onboarding experiences. 

During the selfie process, the technology shall provide a liveness detection to avoid fraud using a static image. 

Liveness detection proves that the selfie taken comes from a live person.

The result?

Adapting to current customer preferences, financial institutions (F.I.s) invest in digital onboarding through online and mobile channels.

Facial recognition with liveness detection simplifies online onboarding and KYC procedures. Thales is a major provider of identity verification solutions, including this feature.

According to Forbes, digital account opening (DAO) was the most popular technology in banking for the third consecutive year. Nearly 80% of financial institutions add new DAO systems or enhance existing ones in 2020 and 2021.

This important trend is combined with the latest marketing advances in customer experience. 

By placing cameras in retail outlets, it is now possible to analyze shoppers' behavior and improve the customer purchase process. 

How exactly? 

Like the system recently designed by Facebook, sales staff are provided with customer information taken from their social media profiles to produce expertly customized responses. 

The American department store Saks Fifth Avenue is already using such a system. Amazon Go stores are reportedly using it.

How long before the selfie payment? 

Since 2017, KFC, the American king of fried chicken, and Chinese retail and tech giant Alibaba have been testing a face recognition payment solution in Hangzhou, China.

In March 2021, 52 Perekrestok stores (Перекрёсток)  from X5 retail group launched touchless payment by face for self-service checkout terminals with Visa Payment System and Sberbank.

The facial recognition payment system would be used in 3,000 stores by yearend, according to Yahoo!

There's more.

According to Interfax, muscovites can pay for metro rides at the end of 2021.

#4 Mapping of new users

While the United States currently offers the largest market for face recognition opportunities, the Asia-Pacific region sees the fastest growth in the sector. China and India lead the field. 

Face recognition in China

Face recognition technology is the new hot topic in China, from banks and airports to police. 

Now authorities are expanding the facial recognition sunglasses program as police are beginning to use them in Beijing's outskirts. 

China is also setting up and perfecting a video surveillance network countrywide.

The facial recognition towers in Chinese cities are emblematic of this move.

This is linked to the social credit system the Chinese government is developing. 

In the TOP 10 cities with the most street cameras per person, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Ji’nan lead the pack.

London is #6 and Atlanta #10, according to the Guardian of 2 December 2019.

There's more.

Chinese police are working with artificial intelligence companies such as Yitu, Megvii (in partnership with Huawei), SenseTime, and CloudWalk, according to The New York Times on 14 April 2019. 

China's ambitions in A.I. (and facial recognition technology) are high. The country aims to become a world leader in A.I. by 2030. 

Surprisingly, China provides strong biometric data protection against private entities AND increases the government's access to personal information.

This paradox is evidenced by privacy expert Emmanuel Pernot- Leplay's report dated 2 November 2020.

Facial recognition in Asia

Facial recognition will be an important topic for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo (postponed to September 2021).

This technology will automatically identify authorized persons and grant them access, enhancing their experience and safety. It's also being used in Japan for easier mobile banking access.

In Sydney, face recognition is undergoing trials at airports to help move people through security much faster and safer.

In India, the Aadhaar project is the largest biometric database in the world. It already provides a unique digital identity number to 1.29 billion residents as of the end of March 2021.

UIDAI, the authority in charge, announced that facial authentication would be launched in a phased roll-out.

It's presently being tested for financial services (October 2020.) 

Face authentication will be available as an add-on service in fusion mode and another authentication factor like a fingerprint, Iris, or TOTP. 

India could also roll out the world's most extensive face recognition system in 2021. 

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has issued an RFP inviting bids to develop a nationwide facial recognition system.

According to the 160-page document, the system will be a centralized web application hosted at the NCRB Data Center in Delhi. It will be available for access to all the police stations.  

It will automatically identify people from CCTV videos and images. The Bureau states it will help police catch criminals, find missing people, and identify dead bodies.

Other large projects

The Superior Electoral Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) is involved in Brazil's nationwide biometric data collection project. The aim is to create a biometric database and unique I.D. cards, recording the information of 140 million citizens. 

In Africa, Gabon, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso have chosen Thales to meet the challenges of biometric identity to identify voters uniquely.

Russia's Central Bank has been deploying a countrywide program since 2017 designed to collect faces, voices, iris scans, and fingerprints.

But the process is progressing very slowly, according to the Biometricupdate website of 13 March 2019.

Moscow claims one of the world’s largest networks of 160,000 surveillance cameras by the end of 2019 and is fitted with facial recognition technology for public safety.

The roll-out started in January 2020.

Russian law does not regulate non-consensual face detection and analysis.

#5 When face recognition strengthens the legal system

Facial recognition technologies radically affect the ethical and societal challenges data protection poses. 

Do these technological feats, worthy of science-fiction novels, genuinely threaten our freedom? 

And with it, our anonymity? 

E.U. and U.K. biometric data protection

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides a rigorous framework for these practices in Europe and the U.K.

Any investigations into a citizen's private life or business travel habits are out of the question, and any such invasions of privacy carry severe penalties. 

Applicable from May 2018, the GDPR supports the principle of a harmonized European framework, particularly protecting the right to be forgotten and giving consent through explicit affirmative action.

Yes, you read it well. There's now one law for 500 million people.

This directive is bound to have international repercussions. 

U.S. biometric data protection landscape

Without a federal law, cities and states are filling the gap.

The State of Washington was the third U.S. state (after Illinois and Texas) to formally protect biometric data through a new law introduced in June 2017. 

California was the fourth state as of January 2020.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), passed in June 2018 and effective as of 1 January 2020, will severely impact privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California and the whole nation.

The law is frequently presented as a model for a federal data privacy law. 

In that sense, the CCPA can potentially become as consequential as the GDPR.

In July 2018, Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s president, compared the face recognition technology to products like highly regulated medicines, and he urged Congress to study it and oversee its use. 

In May 2019, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voiced her "absolute" concerns in a Committee Hearing on facial recognition Technology (Impact on our Civil Rights and Liberties).

A New York State law called the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security (SHIELD) became effective on 21 March 2020. It requires implementing a cybersecurity program and protective measures for N.Y. State residents. 

The act applies to businesses that collect the personal information of N.Y. residents.

With the act, New York now stands beside California.

Facial recognition bans (San Francisco, Somerville, Oakland, San Diego, Boston, Portland)

Privacy and civil rights concerns have escalated in the country as face recognition gains traction as a law enforcement tool, and on 6 May 2019, San Francisco voted to ban facial recognition.

It is the first ban of its kind on the use of face recognition.

The anti-surveillance ordinance signed by San Francisco's Board of Supervisors bars city agencies, including San Francisco PD, from using the technology as of June 2019. 

Yes, this includes law enforcement.

There's more.

As reported by the Boston Globe on 27 June 2019, the Somerville City Council (Massachusetts) voted to ban facial recognition, making the city the second community to make such a decision.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

• On 16 July 2019, Oakland (California) took the same decision and became the third U.S. city to ban face recognition technology. It is interesting to note that the Oakland Police Department is not using this technology and was not planning to use it.
• San Diego took the same decision at the end of December 2019 before the new Californian law. This new law (Assembly Bill 215) about facial recognition and other biometric surveillance) specifically prohibits the use of police body cameras in California. The ban is in place for three years as of 1 January 2020.
• On 24 June 2020, Boston voted to ban face surveillance technology by police, as reported by the Boston Herald.
• Portland (Oregon) decided its ban on 9 September 2020 (effective 1 January 2021.) The city is the first to extend it to "private entities in places of public accommodation", such as private stores. (CNN).
• Massachusetts passed a reform bill in December 2020 restricting the use of facial recognition. It's applicable as of May 2021.
• Virginia legislature passed (April 2021) a new bill (H.B. 2031) that prohibits law enforcement agencies from continuing to use facial recognition software after 1 July 2021.

Since the San Francisco, Sommerville, Oakland, and now San Diego, Boston, and Portland rulings, the debate has gotten louder in many cities and states, not just in the U.S.

In Europe, at the end of August 2019, Sweden's Data Protection Authority decided to ban facial recognition technology in schools. It fined a local high school (the first GDPR penalty in the country).

How to better regulate emerging technologies?

So,

• Should other cities or countries follow this example?
• Is the ban just a "pause button" to better assess risks?
• Is this a step backwards for public safety?
• Is there a policy vacuum? At which level?

Stay tuned for the outcome of all these discussions as the U.S. Congress is getting pressure from activists to ban the technology and from providers) to regulate.

But there's still no Federal legal framework to address the issue as of May 2021.

The E.U. Commission plans to act on the indiscriminate use of facial identifier technology. The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen wants a coordinated approach to artificial intelligence's human and ethical implications. She has pledged to publish an A.I. legislation blueprint very soon.

The final version of the European Commission whitepaper is available online. The European Commission presented tough draft rules in April 2021. But according to Reuters, it could take years before the regulations come into force.

Similarly, in June 2021, the E.U.'s two privacy watchdogs (EDPB and  EDPS) called for a ban on facial recognition in publicly accessible spaces.

Again the questions of privacy, consent, and function creep (data collected for one purpose being used for another)are central to the debate.

In our biometric data dossier, find more on biometric data protection laws(E.U., U.K., and U.S. perspectives).

India and its national biometric identification scheme, Aadhaar

In India, thanks to the Puttaswamy judgment delivered on 27 August 2017, the Supreme Court has enshrined the right to privacy in the country's constitution. This decision has rebalanced the relationship between citizens and the state and posed a new challenge to expanding the Aadhaar project.

The Indian government, however, approved the use of the country's biometric EID program by private entities on 28 February 2019.

Rebound effect: the legal system and its professions get even stronger. 

As ambassadors and guardians of data protection regulation, data protection officers have become necessary for businesses and have a much sought-after role. 

#6 The rebels – facial recognition hackers

Despite this technical and legal arsenal designed to protect data, citizens, and their anonymity, critical voices have still been raised. 

Some parties are concerned and alarmed by these developments. Some have taken action. 

But can facial recognition be fooled?

• Grigory Bakunov in Russia has invented a solution to escape proper face detection and confuse face detection devices. He has developed an algorithm that creates special makeup to fool the software. However, he has not brought his product to market after realizing how easily criminals could use it.

• In Germany, Berlin artist Adam Harvey has developed a similar device known as CV Dazzle. He is now working on clothing featuring patterns to prevent detection. The hyperface camouflage includes patterns in fabric, such as eyes and mouths, to fool the face recognition system.

• In late 2017, a Vietnamese company successfully used a mask to hack the Face ID face recognition function of Apple's iPhone X. However, the hack is too complicated to implement for large-scale exploitation.

• Around the same time, researchers from a German company revealed a hack that allowed them to bypass the facial authentication of Windows 10 Hello by printing a facial image in infrared.

• ​Forbes announced in May 2018 that researchers from the University of Toronto had developed an algorithm to disrupt facial recognition software (aka privacy filter).

• In August 2020, the Verge detailed a "cloaking" app named Fawkes. The software gradually distorts your selfies and other pics you may leave on social media. The tool comes from the University of Chicago’s Sand Lab.

In short, a user could apply a filter that modifies​ specific pixels in an image before putting it on the web. These changes are imperceptible to the human eye but are very confusing for facial recognition algorithms. 

• In November 2020, a tool named Anonymizer was made available by Generated Media. The software creates a series of synthetic portraits from a picture you can upload. According to the website, the images are mathematically similar to your face and look like you but will trick facial recognition software. It could be an interesting solution to fool systems like Clearview A.I. that are scrapping millions of faces from social media (learn more on the Clearview A.I. controversy).

An interesting experiment by Thomas Smith, published on 28 January 2021, revealed a simple technique to make you invisible.

According to his tests, wearing a disposable mask and opaque sunglasses is a powerful combination to render you invisible.

Why?

In that case, the F.R. systems are denied too much valuable information (mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows) to make a precise facial comparison.

The industry is working on anti-spoofing mechanisms, and standardization groups have specifically identified two topics: 

1. Make sure the captured image has been done from a person and not from a photograph (2D), a video screen (2D), or a mask (3D) (liveness check or liveness detection)
2. Ensure that two or more individuals' facial images (morphed portraits) have not been joined into a reference document, such as a passport.

#7 Further together – towards hybridized solutions

Future identification and authentication solutions will borrow from all aspects of biometrics. 

This will lead to a biometric mix capable of guaranteeing total security and privacy for all stakeholders in the ecosystem. 

It's very much the spirit of Thales Gemalto IdCloud Fraud Prevention, a risk assessment and fraud detection software for payments.

In this solution, geolocation, I.P. addresses (the device being used), and keying patterns can create a solid combination to authenticate users for online banking or egovernment services securely.

This seventh trend belongs to us. 

It's our job to envisage it together and make it happen through high-added-value biometric projects.

Face recognition and you.

Now it's your turn.

The months hold many changes in store.

Indeed, we can't claim to predict all the essential topics that will emerge in the short-term future. 

Can you fill in some of the gaps?

If you've something to say on facial recognition, tech, trends, a question to ask, or have found this article useful, please leave a comment in the box below. 

We'd also welcome any suggestions on how it could be improved or proposals for future articles.

We look forward to hearing from you.