Facebook more like, I-am-almost-human

Facebook’s new facial recognition app is so advanced that it doesn’t need to see your face to actually recognize you.

With more than 150M monthly users, Facebook has decided to enter a complete new territory by turning itself into a forensic lab with the new facial recognition app – Moments. This photo-sharing app is available for android and iOS users. The user only needs to allow Moments to access pictures from their smartphones. This new app helps in digging out old pictures that the user otherwise wouldn’t look at.

This feature is so advanced that it can identify who you are without actually looking at your face. Other cues like the back of your head, hairstyle, clothes and the way you pose will help Facebook in identifying. This technology is about 83% accurate.

According to Yann LeCun, head of artificial intelligence at Facebook, if humans can recognize people they know without looking at their face, why can’t Facebook’s application?

Unfortunately, it has raised many privacy questions. It collects pictures from the Smartphone, manages them, identifies other people in the picture and tags them by default. However, facial recognition without user’s permission is a little terrifying. This new app will probably not be launched in Europe because of the objections raised by the European regulators and other privacy concerns.