Tuesday, October 25, 2016

85 Million Faces

It should be pretty obvious why Microsoft wants 85 million faces. According to its privacy policy
Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you the products we offer, which includes using data to improve and personalize your experiences. We also may use the data to communicate with you, for example, informing you about your account, security updates and product information. And we use data to help show more relevant ads, whether in our own products like MSN and Bing, or in products offered by third parties. (retrieved 25 October 2016)
Facial recognition software is big business, and high quality image data is clearly a valuable asset.

But why would 85 million people go along with this? I guess they thought they were just playing a game, and didn't think of it in terms of donating their personal data to Microsoft. The bait was to persuade people to find out how old the software thought they were.

The Daily Mail persuaded a number of female celebrities to test the software, and printed the results in today's paper.

Talking of beards ...




Kyle Chayka, Face-recognition software: Is this the end of anonymity for all of us? (Independent, 23 April 2014)

Chris Frey, Revealed: how facial recognition has invaded shops – and your privacy (Guardian, 3 March 2016)

Rebecca Ley, Would YOU  dare ask a computer how old you look? Eight brave women try out the terrifyingly simple new internet craze (Daily Mail, 25 October 2016)


Related Post: Another 20 million faces (January 2018)


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