Arcsoft has released a software update for its Simplicam home monitoring system that will allow for facial recognition, according to an article by Josh Lowensohn on The Verge. The feature was initially supposed to be included as part of the package with the Simplicam went on sale last year, but the technology’s complexity was such that the company was only just able to release the update, which is free for users registered with the monthly service.
The facial recognition feature doesn’t rely on Facebook images or any other such database; rather, users must train it to recognize themselves and their familiars. It sounds like a pretty painless process; the camera’s speaker instructs the user to slowly turn her head from right to left and back as it scans her face, and then she’s in the system. The system will then start categorizing all of the videos in which it recognizes the user, and will learn as the user deletes false matches.
While this feature allows for a number of useful applications, perhaps the most obvious benefit will be to alert users when someone who is not a member of the household appears on camera – in which case the system can be set to send the user an alert about it. It’s the reverse of a similar application of this technology used more and more frequently by law enforcement officials, in which video feeds are scanned for the faces of criminal and terrorist elements. Of course, this is on a much smaller scale, which points to the growing ubiquity of facial recognition technology; it’s even appearing on some smartphones for user authentication purposes, as in the case of Android Lollipop’s ‘Face Unlock’ feature.
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February 4, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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