
IOS 5 To Have Powerful Face Detection - DanielRibeiro
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/ios-5-to-have-powerful-face-detection/
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cambriaone
This is such shitty reporting by TechCrunch. 1\. The face detection APIs were
new in 5.0 – although under NDA, they are hardly newsworthy, especially
considering now that 5.0 has been in beta for weeks if not months. 2\. Face
detection is NOT the same as face recognition. There's an important
distinction: The latter recognizes a _particular face_ where as the former can
only recognize facial features and detect that it is _a face_. 3\. 9to5
published this story on Monday. It took TC 3 days to notice and rip it off?
Lame.

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hamner
Hopefully this will improve on the algorithms they have in Lion (which seemed
to work ever-so slightly better than OpenCV's face detection and work poorly
on profile views).

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jentulman
I'm wondering if this will trickle into unlock screens and profile logins, I
can only see that being highly frustrating. I have little faith in biometrics
and can just imagine that not being able to log in due to having your angry
face on can only become a viscous circle of lockout.

Then again, if you can teach it your intoxicated face then you could have a
phone version of gmail's mail goggles.

On a more serious note, can anyone give me a practical non entertainment use
for facial recognition in an desktop app? With the quality of camera it's
likely to be working with in the near future there doesn't seem to be much
scope for more than just 'yep, that's a face, here's roughly where the
features are'.

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ctdonath
I keep wondering when the "Welcome back, Mr. Yamamoto" scene from
_Minority_Report_ will become reality.

iOS including strong face recognition will be a big step toward that.

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schrototo
Not face recognition, face _detection_. The new APIs [1] make it possible to
_detect_ if an image _contains_ faces and returns position data of various
face features (eyes and mouth). There is no way to recognize which person a
face belongs to.

As an aside, why do rumor sites always have to make it seem as if these things
were somehow hidden? It's a well-known and documented part of a public API (it
just happens to be under NDA at the moment, but it's not any kind of secret,
really).

[1]
[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/#document...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/#documentation/CoreImage/Reference/CIDetector_Ref/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010974)

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smackfu
Must be depressing to work at Apple and be the dev on the Photo Booth app.

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drivebyacct2
Yes, I'm going to be that guy, but Google showed off face "detection" (not
recognition) at Google IO, and in my opinion, in a fairly cool way.

Sorry that I actually read the source material (or is it merely that I implied
that it's not some god send from Apple). The only conclusion that is supported
by the literature, source tweets, or "revealed" API functions... indicate
"facial detection". Not recognition as commenters here or the TC article
imply. Maybe someone else has info they're not sharing with me.

Downvote away, feel free to actually indicate where this is new from
information that was known or anything that supports the "facial
[recognition]" that we're all speculating about. What a joke.

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ugh
It’s an article about a new feature in iOS. It’s factually wrong and awful but
it doesn’t claim anywhere that the face detection is revolutionary.

What was your goal by bringing Android into this? That can only result in
unproductive discussions and it’s also kinda irrelevant.

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drivebyacct2
Because the reaction to this on HN is like most other things Apple announces
after others already have, and as often is the case (and not helped by the
article) it misattributes magical features that aren't even in the feature
being discussed. I guess I should've just kept my groaning to myself.

~~~
ugh
You might be a victim of confirmation bias. Not everything should be seen from
the Google vs. Apple angle.

