
Dunkin' Donut stores using facial-recognition system to serve targeted ads  - makimaki
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/15/privacy.advertising?gusrc=rss&feed=technologyfull
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cglee
_Two Dunkin' Donuts stores are about to start trialling a system that can scan
your face and play an advert on a digital screen that is targeted to your age,
gender and demographic group_

ie, racial profiling, stereotyping, etc ... another reason why I avoid the
chains now and go to the local neighborhood stores where _people_ recognize my
face know my name.

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DabAsteroid
_I avoid the chains now and go to the local neighborhood stores where_ people
_recognize my face know my name._

<http://www.reason.com/news/show/122019.html>

 _Economists have been at war with the make-work bias for centuries. The 19th-
century economist Frederic Bastiat ridiculed the equation of prosperity with
jobs as "Sisyphism," after the mythological fully employed Greek who was
eternally condemned to roll a boulder up a hill.

In the eyes of the public, he wrote, "effort itself constitutes and measures
wealth. To progress is to increase the ratio of effort to result. Its ideal
may be represented by the toil of Sisyphus, at once barren and eternal." For
the economist, by contrast, wealth "increases proportionately to the increase
in the ratio of result to effort. Absolute perfection, whose archetype is God,
consists [of] a situation in which no effort at all yields infinite results."_

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zitterbewegung
Sounds like stuff from the minority report.

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josefresco
But without the creepy Scientology-Cruise baggage.

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mrtron
The technology for this sort of recognition integrated with advertising is
shoddy at best.

At this year's InfoComm there was quite a number of systems demoing this type
of technology - but it could basically only identify one person who was not
moving and directly facing the camera.

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lbrandy
The first part of your statement is true. The face-recognition field suffers
from major perceptions issues. Detecting age and gender for demographic-based
advertising is possibly feasible.. beyond that.. I have my doubts. Especially
at Dunkin' Donuts price point.

The second part is probably also true, but if you think that's true industry
wide, feel free to drop by our offices in Pittsburgh (www.pittpatt.com). I've
got something to show you :) Hopefully when we get done with the current
website rewrite, I'll be able to just link to cool stuff instead of making
vague promises.

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mrtron
Feel free to send me an email with your contact details to further discuss.

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Tichy
So is face recognition technology good enough now to sort through my photos
and tag all pictures that have grandma in it? Any information about it would
be greatly appreciated. Are there good algorithms that are free to use, or is
it a wasteland of patents?

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lbrandy
So I work at a face recognition start-up.... and the answer to your question
is "Yes, but your mileage may vary". Face recognition algorithms in the wild
vary in quality by absurd margins. I know our stuff can do a pretty good job
of it (because I've done it, internally).

There are websites that are trying to do it. There is a need, however, for
local applications that do it (so people aren't uploading all their photos to
the web). The real problem is the actual business-case for creating such a
product, especially from our perspective. We don't want to make a full-fledged
photo application. So how about a plugin? Would people buy it? Should we give
it away? Do photo-sharing applications provide a good way for us interface our
metadata? etc. etc.

I'm pretty sure if you gave our program a bunch of images, and we gave you an
xml file with all the identities, you wouldn't be impressed. So we need a way
of interacting with your photosharing application. And photo-sharing
applications as "platforms" for plugins don't exactly inspire confidence.

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jakewolf
I'm going to wear a Palin mask to every Dunkin Donuts Store.

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steveplace
_Greetings! Would you like to try our new Moose-flavored iced latte?_

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fallentimes
I don't care how effective this ends up being - it's creepy. And as another
commenter noted: people (including me) will stop going there.

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DabAsteroid
Is it almost as creepy as when you pull up to a controlled intersection, and
it turns green for you? It's almost as if it recognizes your car as a car.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=traffic+loop>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22creeps+me+out%2C+man%22>

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fallentimes
I think it's way more creepy than that.

