Holy moly, that's a very curious side effect of technology on culture.
Crazy cyberpunk look necessary to avoid computerized detection.
I can see this being the norm or strictly banned in the future.
That doesn't seem like it would work at all. The makeup and hair styles suggested would make you stand out even more! Sure, 1990s-style facial recognition won't work as reliably, but surely today's systems would flag you right away!
Note this is designed to fool facial detection, not recognition. Detection generally uses much simpler algorithms because in most cases it needs to be orders of magnitude faster.
I was working on a project with OpenCV a few years ago. After a few embarrassing incidents I had to add a kludge whereby if it detected a small face directly above a big face, it was to discard the big one.
It turns out that the torsos of portly women with large breasts make ideal face candidates.
"Flag you" as what? It doesn't need to completely "fool" the system & make it believe there is no face. It simply has to get the system to believe that "makeup style A" and "makeup style B" applied to the same face are, in fact, two different faces. This is a pretty low bar, and one which I suspect will be achievable for quite some time.
I haven't tested it myself but according to CVdazzle it works. So the next question is how long before facial recognition technology overcomes efforts to confound it. Or how long until legislators get involved.
Yes the looks are ridiculous, but most fashion starts out that way. People often look for ways to stand out and being "retro" could enhance the cool factor.
What does someone care if a mugger's facial recognition software "flags" them? And who exactly is being flagged? And if a security surveillance system flags you what is the consequence? Who does that consequence apply to?
> "What you can do now is link your face-recognition system to Facewatch and it will pull down the watch list that's relevant for your premises and your group," he says. "Then, if someone walks into your premises, it will send you an alert."
So if you have a criminal record, or your face somehow ends up in that database, you could find yourself followed around shops and asked (or told) to leave. These sorts of massive watch lists aren't feasible with merely human recognizers.