Face recognition for authentification has been around for a quite a while, let's see how robust Apple could make it. It's still a weird future we're heading towards.
It makes me wonder what legal consequences it's gonna have once this kind of technology is widespread among all smartphones with high identification reliability? What's to stop anybody from combining different biometric identification systems into one device? A combination of Touch ID/Face ID, coupled with some voice recognition and whatever else is possible with biometrics, would probably be able to identify the user with a very high certainty.
Smartphones are also increasingly being turned into an "ID card replacement", even banks have been pushing to use them as a replacement for CC/Debit cards for years.
Which kinda makes sense considering how not every country has ID cards but a vast number of people on this planet have smartphones or at least mobile phones.
If one wanted to index the whole human population of planet Earth, it would probably a good start to "just" collect the SIM/IMEI data from all mobile phones in circulation. [0]
It's still a quite dystopian idea of a future, where the identity of a person is solely defined and legitimized by their smartphone/mobile device. Scary thing being: We are closer to this kind of future than it might seem; the aptly named US program "Skynet" uses mobile metadata for targeting selection of drone strikes, has been doing so for quite a while [1]
No. They even brought up Spock and Evil Goatee Spock to mention that twins defeat it.
(I say "defeat". Schiller just said the chances of a false positive were higher with twins than the 1/1,000,000 base rate [compared with his claim of 1/50,000 for TouchID])
This was explicitly brought up by the presenter (though through the premise of an "evil twin" and a photo of Spock from Mirror, Mirror) and they said you should consider a password.
Twins shouldn't be a problem. Even the ghetto facial recognition implementation in the AliPay app (a Chinese PayPal clone) can tell twins apart. Surely Apple can do an even better job.
They say that Face ID falsely recognizes 1 in 1,000,000 people (1 in 50,000 for Touch ID), but it's a lot easier to find the people who look like a given target to unlock their phone. Could be an issue if a mutual friend knows someone who looks enough like you to unlock your phone.
Exactly. Someone mining Facebook could build a directory of doppelgängers near each person. A little social engineering could get a bystander to unlock the target's phone without them even realizing they are facilitating a crime.
Ironically people who look like you to humans tend to be a further away to biometrics.
I've worked on a few facial biometric systems in the past and the false positives were really shocking about 65% of them were cross sex and virtually none of them looked alike.
People tend to look at different flesh centric facial features and things like hair style, eye color and overall superficial appearance is what we see.
Biometrics see distance between various points like eyes, nose bridge cheek bones etc we tend to actually overlook those fine features when it comes to doppelgängers.
From friends that still work in the field gate analysis seems to have the lowest rate of false positives yet so maybe IPhone X2 will require you to dance to unlock.
> From friends that still work in the field gate analysis seems to have the lowest rate of false positives yet so maybe IPhone X2 will require you to dance to unlock.
It's not clear whether the false positives would mainly be among "similar faces", or it probably could happen due to signature collisions on entirely different faces? Like, a weakness in the algorithm which causes two entirely different faces to hash to a very similar signature.
I've only known one set of identical twins, back in high school, and at first I thought they looked the same. After a while, however, you can recognize the differences. I suspect a phone has enough data points that it sees them as different people.
During the presentation, they mentioned that if you have an evil twin, you should probably use a passcode, so I'm assuming that the acceptable range for recognizing is larger than the ranges of difference between identical twins.
A non-conclusive list of places where this will be an issue:
China, Japan, S.E.A.: Surgical masks against smog, or to avoid spreading germs.
Northern Europe, Canada, Northern US: Winter clothing that covers the face to avoid the cold temperatures
Middle East: Religious clothing for women hiding their faces.
Anywhere with hot summers: Sunglasses covering the entire eyes, making it impossible to see if you’re looking at the screen (which is a requirement for FaceID unlock).
> China, Japan, S.E.A.: Surgical masks against smog, or to avoid spreading germs. Northern Europe, Canada, Northern US: Winter clothing that covers the face to avoid the cold temperatures
I am thinking that there will be the ability to program recognition with clothing that you own (color, texture) if you want to accept the risk. For most people I don't think they will be worried about something that has some of the same facial features stealing their phone. After all not everything will be blocked. And for that matter you can't do touch ID with gloves on, right?
> Middle East: Religious clothing for women hiding their faces.
Nothing to prevent a third party from offering a device which also allows touch id or simply using the alternate unlock. After all I don't think the amount of women hiding their faces in middle east countries means that the rest of us can't have this feature. How much business will they lose? In the end this is a business decision not a social one.
> Sunglasses covering the entire eyes, making it impossible to see if you’re looking at the screen (which is a requirement for FaceID unlock).
Once again will probably be able to allow use of sunglasses that you own with facial features that you have. Sure chance that someone could spoof you but for most of us not really a big threat. And someone needs the phone to do so and needs to know what you have programmed in as far as your clothing.
> Anywhere with hot summers: Sunglasses covering the entire eyes, making it impossible to see if you’re looking at the screen (which is a requirement for FaceID unlock).
I wonder if the IR sensor can actually see through the sunglasses?
Might vary with the make of the sunglasses, but I took an IR photo of a colleague wearing sunglasses, and on the photo the glasses were completely transparent. So the FaceID has a good chance to work with sunglasses.
That’s a bad sign, usually good sunglasses also block IR and UV light, as the eye only closes the iris based on visible light, but can still be damaged by too much exposure in IR or UV bands.
What are some examples of sunglasses that block IR? When I looked around earlier (curious about the same question) it didn't seem to be a standard feature at all.
You know what would be extremely useful at this point? An actual demo from a reporter, and not only for the FaceID, but in general for how the phone works without a home button.
Steel and aluminum is still cheaper and easier to work with than titanium. Easier manufacturing higher margins.
P.S. the iphone is made of aluminum not steel
They are supply constrained by many of the materials and parts that are used on this phone (OLED screens, for example). You can bet that they will bring the price down to earth when they can manufacture in mass quantity.
You've got to remember they sell nearly 50 million of these things every quarter. They don't just appear out of thin air.
You really didn't read the article did you. Second paragraph says "Apple says the facial scan is so accurate there’s now only a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of another random person’s face being able to unlock your phone. This is much better than the 1 in 50,000 error rate for Touch ID. And no, holding a photo up of someone can’t unlock their phone – nor can a Hollywood-grade face mask, which (shown below) were used by Apple’s engineering teams to train the feature."
It makes me wonder what legal consequences it's gonna have once this kind of technology is widespread among all smartphones with high identification reliability? What's to stop anybody from combining different biometric identification systems into one device? A combination of Touch ID/Face ID, coupled with some voice recognition and whatever else is possible with biometrics, would probably be able to identify the user with a very high certainty.
Smartphones are also increasingly being turned into an "ID card replacement", even banks have been pushing to use them as a replacement for CC/Debit cards for years.
Which kinda makes sense considering how not every country has ID cards but a vast number of people on this planet have smartphones or at least mobile phones. If one wanted to index the whole human population of planet Earth, it would probably a good start to "just" collect the SIM/IMEI data from all mobile phones in circulation. [0]
It's still a quite dystopian idea of a future, where the identity of a person is solely defined and legitimized by their smartphone/mobile device. Scary thing being: We are closer to this kind of future than it might seem; the aptly named US program "Skynet" uses mobile metadata for targeting selection of drone strikes, has been doing so for quite a while [1]
[0] https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKYNET_(surveillance_program)