Snapchat Has Fun With Deepfakes – Identity News Digest

Welcome to FindBiometrics’ digest of identity industry news. Here’s what you need to know about the world of digital identity and biometrics today:

League of Arab States Ministers Discuss Shared Biometric Database

The League of Arab States appears to be mulling the creation of a joint biometric database. According to a Gulf Times report, representatives of Qatar’s Ministry of Interior recently participated in a meeting of the General Secretariat of the Arab Interior Ministers Council concerning the establishment of a biometric database, with discussions including potential regulations regarding compliance with the laws of member states and international conventions. The General Secretariat of the Arab Interior Ministers Council is a decades-old ministerial council meant to facilitate cooperation between the members of the League of Arab States.

Precise Biometrics Names New CEO

Precise Biometrics has named Joakim Nydemark as its new CEO, with Patrick Höijer departing the role “at his own request.” Höijer had taken the helm last year, shortly after its acquisition of EastCoast Solutions, and would go on to steer Precise’s corporate reorganization and help establish new sales channels in the US. He also oversaw a rights issuance that he later acknowledged was not universally popular, but defended as a capital-raising measure that helped secure Precise’s financial position. Nydemark, meanwhile, joined the company this past June as the EVP and CCO of its Algo business unit.

Alaska Airlines Embraces Airside’s Digital ID for Passenger Check-In

Alaska Airlines has launched a mobile passenger identity app allowing US and Canadian passport holders to bypass the check-in process for international flights. The ‘Mobile Verify’ system operates through the Airside Digital Identity app for Android or iOS, which asks users to enroll by submitting a selfie photo and a picture of their passport’s photo page, and by holding their phone over the passport’s back cover to enable the app to read the passport’s embedded chip. Airside was acquired by the selfie onboarding specialist Onfido earlier this year.

Snapchat Launches Generative AI Feature

Snapchat has launched a generative AI feature for its messaging platform that creates a series of deepfakes based on a user’s selfie image. The deepfakes are meant to be fun, showing the end user in various imagined scenarios, such as dressed up as a superhero and being chased by a dragon. A similar feature in an app called Lensa that went viral last year led to a lawsuit under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, which was recently sent by a judge to arbitration.

Hitachi, Tobu Railway Team Up On Biometric Payments

Hitachi and Tobu Railway, a major railway company operating the Greater Tokyo Area, have announced a partnership focused on developing a biometric payments system based on facial and finger vein recognition. The system would allow registered shoppers to pay for purchases with a biometric scan, and no need to present payment cards or cash. The companies plan to deploy biometric self-checkout kiosks in certain supermarket around Tokyo by the end of this year, and hope to see further deployments at gyms and hotels in the future.

Gallagher, Edge360 Combine Surveillance and Access Control Technologies

Gallagher Security has teamed up with Edge360, a specialist in containerized video management. The partnership will enable users of Gallagher’s Command Centre platform to control video surveillance and access control systems from a single interface. According to a statement announcing the partnership, the integration will also deliver to users “advanced video analytics capabilities” including “facial recognition, object detection, people counting, and motion detection”.

Contactless Fingerprints Startup Announces Deduplication Tool

Neurodactyl, a contactless fingerprint recognition specialist based in Tbilisi, Georgia, has announced a new deduplication tool for large biometric databases. Its “direct all-to-all matching” algorithm is designed to match all fingerprints in a database against each other, and the company says it is exceptionally fast, thanks in part to its use of compact biometric templates weighing in at 512 bytes. Neurodactyl says its solution can perform up to a billion matching operations per second on a CPU and 10 billion matches per second on a GPU. The company was only just founded this year, and has reportedly raised a little over $1.3 million in funding.

Face-Scanning Robot Patrols Atlanta Football Stadium

The Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Falcons, is now being patrolled by a quadrupedal robot with facial recognition capabilities. Dubbed “Benzie”, the robot was designed by Boston Dynamics and built by Asylon Robotics. It’s meant to autonomously search the stadium’s perimeter for intruders, sending an alert in the event that it detects security threats.

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August 29, 2023 – by Alex Perala