Advertisers start using facial recognition to tailor pitches

[Eugen Leitl]

(getting my Guy Fawkes mask, brb)

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facial-recognition-20110821,0,3322937,full.story

Advertisers start using facial recognition to tailor pitches

Once the stuff of science fiction and high-tech crime fighting, facial
recognition technology has become one of the newest tools in marketing, even
though privacy concerns abound.

Facial recognition

NEC employee Olga Foster demonstrates a facial recognition system's ability
to estimate her age, gender and race. NEC makes display screens used for
facial recognition-driven ads. (NEC Corp. / August 3, 2011)

By Shan Li and David Sarno, Los Angeles Times

August 21, 2011

Picture this: You stop in front of a digital advertising display at a mall
and suddenly an ad pops up touting makeup, followed by one for shoes and then
one for butter pecan ice cream.

It seems to know you're a woman in your late 20s and, in fact, it does. When
you looked at the display, it scanned your facial features and tailored its
messages to you.

Once the stuff of science fiction and high-tech crime fighting, facial
recognition technology has become one of the newest tools in marketing, even
though privacy concerns abound.

The Venetian resort, hotel and casino in Las Vegas has started using it on
digital displays to tailor suggestions for restaurants, clubs and
entertainment to passersby.

Kraft Foods Inc. and Adidas say they are planning to experiment with it as
early as this year to push their products.

A group of U.S. bar owners in Chicago last month started using facial
recognition, in conjunction with mounted cameras, to keep tabs on the
male/female ratio and age mixes of their crowds. Patrons planning a night out
can use mobile apps to get a real-time check of a venue's vibe.

"This helps people avoid those hit-or-miss nights," said Cole Harper, 27,
co-founder of the SceneTap company that makes the app.

The commercial applications of facial recognition are in contrast to those
being used by law enforcement to identify specific individuals. Companies, at
least at this point, mostly just want to pinpoint a demographic based on age
and gender to tailor their ads.

But even this facial recognition-lite alarms privacy advocates, given that it
could greatly popularize and expand use of the technology.

Intel Corp., which makes such software, said it's widely adaptable.

"You can put this technology into kiosks, vending machines, digital signs,"
said Christopher O'Malley, director of retail marketing for Intel's embedded
and communications group. "It's going to become a much more common thing in
the next few years."

So far, the technology is in most use commercially in Japan, where a variety
of businesses use it to customize ads.

"It's not just clothing stores or restaurant chains," said Joseph Jasper,
spokesman for NEC Corp., which makes display screens used for facial
recognition-driven ads. Banks, for example, use it to target customers based
on their ages, separating out older customers from young people who are more
likely to be opening their first account.

The technology works by digitally measuring the distance between the eyes,
the width of the nose, the length of a jawline and other data points. Law
enforcement agencies that use facial recognition b as was done during the
recent London riots b compare the measurements against photos in databases.

But for most marketing uses, the measurements are compared to standardized
codes that represent features typical of males and females in various age
brackets.

Adidas is working with Intel to install and test digital walls with facial
recognition in a handful of stores either in the U.S. or Britain. If a woman
in her 50s walks by and stops, 60% of the shoes displayed will be for females
in her age bracket, while the other 40% will be a random sprinkling of other
goods.

"If a retailer can offer the right products quickly, people are more likely
to buy something," said Chris Aubrey, vice president of global retail
marketing for Adidas.

Kraft said it's in talks with a supermarket chain, which it would not
identify, to test face-scanning kiosks.

"If it recognizes that there is a female between 25 to 29 standing there, it
may surmise that you are more likely to have minor children at home and give
suggestions on how to spice up Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for the kids," said
Donald King, the company's vice president of retail experience.

Privacy advocates worry the technology is one more way for companies to
quietly gather data about people without their permission or even knowledge.
In June, Facebook Inc. rolled out a facial recognition feature worldwide that
could pinpoint individuals. It was used to automatically identify friends
when you uploaded photos of them onto the social network.

When members realized this was happening, many loudly objected, calling it
creepy and invasive. The feature still exists, but the company apologized and
made it more clear how users can opt out.

Earlier this year, Google Inc. said privacy concerns drove the company to
abandon a project for mobile phones that would have enabled users to snap
photos of someone and then run a search online for other photos of the
person.

"We built that technology and we withheld it," Google Executive Chairman Eric
Schmidt said at the D: All Things Digital conference in May. He said the
decision was made because "of the fact that people could use this stuff in a
very, very bad way as well as in a good way."

The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center said such uses of facial
recognition have the potential to violate civil liberties and give
governments too much power.

"What if the government starts compiling a database of everyone who shows up
to protests?" asked Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the group. "There
are so many 1st Amendment and human rights concerns. It's a slippery slope.

"When you think about facial recognition, you have to ask the questions, 'Why
is it being done?' 'Who is it being done to?' 'How is that information used?'
and 'What is it linked to?'"

David C. Thompson, an attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson who specializes in
privacy law, said the use of facial recognition can catch and expose people
during very sensitive moments of their lives, such as going to an abortion
clinic or a cancer treatment center.

"The problem is that there are things we do that we don't need a permanent
record of," Thompson said. "I don't need other people to know where I've been
and what I'm doing."

Ed Warm, co-owner of Joe's Bar in Chicago, said many customers were excited
about the SceneTap app that gave them the demographics of the crowd in the
bar on any given night, but were clueless that facial recognition technology
made it possible.

"Frankly, almost no one seemed to care how it worked," Warm said.

Sami Ari, a 27-year-old social media marketer, is one of about 8,000 people
who have downloaded the app. He knew it was facial recognition at work and
didn't mind it.

"I use it at least once a week to find a cool place for me and my friends to
hang out," said Ari, who describes himself as "hyper social."

"It's not that scary," he added. "I always get upset at new Facebook privacy
settings, and then I get over it."

shan.li at latimes.com

david.sarno at latimes.com