
Today I was unable to take a picture in a photo kiosk - louis-paul
https://twitter.com/DrPragyaAgarwal/status/1209175998090088448
======
gregoriol
People tend to think of this as horrible discriminating decisions made by some
horrible people, but most likely it is a very cheap machine developed by an
intern who had 3 days to make something work...

~~~
Waterluvian
Trivially fixable even in that fairly inexcusable case: add an override
button.

"by overriding you accept that this photo may ultimately be rejected for
passport use."

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
There is an option to override, it’s just not visible in the picture.

The booth is asking the user to “touch an option” but only 1 option is
visible, the option to retake the photo has a “attempts remaining” counter and
that the company logo is in the middle of the photo preview (the photo preview
is in the middle of two options, which will make the company logo centred on
the screen).

------
salmo
I saw a great talk at a conference about this by a woman from the University
of Florida. I am sorry I don't remember her name or the conference. But this
is a classic symptom of lack of diversity of developers (or test subjects).
It's like the sinks that don't activate with dark hands (one of her examples).
It's another reason we need to focus on developing underrepresented talent.

------
deogeo
Why does a photo kiosk enforce passport photo requirements?

~~~
tssva
Because it is a photo kiosk for taking passport photos.

~~~
deogeo
That doesn't clarify much. Is this some kind of official, government-
sanctioned kiosk, whose approval of a photo carries some sort of final
authority, and it doesn't just pass the photo on to the passport office?

Because otherwise, it would work just fine without this enforcement
functionality.

~~~
austhrow743
Submitting a bad photo with your passport application can really suck. It
delays things a lot and potentially even costs you a submission fee.

The point of passport photo services is to mimic (or try to) the official
government photo reviewers criteria. That's the value it provides. Learning
that you will be rejected quickly rather than slowly.

~~~
deogeo
Merely informing you of a bad photo would provide the same value. No need for
enforcement.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
Probably easier to send the photo off to mechanical Turk if it’s not a perfect
match.

------
kmlx
i guess it's trendy to assume the worst, but my optimistic take is that "the
machine is broken, use a different machine". maybe because encountering broken
machines in public use is pretty much a daily experience for me.

the company that produces the software or the box will either notice the issue
and fix it. or not and be punished by the market.

------
coldtea
Well, she does look smiling to me in the picture she posted...

------
aaron695
Unlike the title this is for a passport photo.

You can't smile in a passport photo.

If you compare her lips to recommended passport photos she is more smiling.

If you look at the 2nd happy looking woman here, you can see her lips are not
actually in a smile as much as the twitter pic -
[https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-
for-...](https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a-
visa/tools-and-information/acceptable-photos)

Twitter pic has a dour expression but AI isn't fooled, it looks at lips.

Humans might be fooled and let the photo through though.

Would need more evidence. The open mouth, not sure, stop smiling it might
disappear, it could be a follow on assumption.

~~~
thundergolfer
We don’t need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and
their mouth is not open.

The picture meets every criteria listed on the website you linked. It’s
totally fine.

~~~
coldtea
> _We don’t need more evidence. The person in the picture is not smiling and
> their mouth is not open._

Well, she looks 100% like she is smiling to me. Her mouth is indeed not open,
though, so I'll give you that.

Even if that's her facial structure, and she was consciously not smiling, she
does appear to be smiling.

