Placing the Face - Riya.com in Wired
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Written By Reprise Media | December 7, 2005 | Share This
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Early this week the story broke of the first successful face transplant performed on a woman whose face had been mauled by her Labrador retriever.
A number of media outlets have picked up the story and are working through all the possible angles, everything from the forensic implications (how do you identify a body that has a different face?) to the beauty debate (does she still look pretty?).
Wired News is running one of the more interesting stories, a substantial piece on facial-recognition technology and its implications on individual privacy amidst the ever-increasing surveillance of our modern society.
In doing so it profiles Riya, a company that’s pioneered a product which enables users to search for specific individuals using an automated rather than human eye:
“Subscribers upload photos, and then tell the Riya software who the person is. By repeatedly running the recognition algorithm against multiple photos of the same person, Riya software eventually learns to identify other images of the same face. Once trained, the software will automatically generate meta tags, and users can search their own photos and the photos of other subscribers.”
As the article indicates, the ability for the government to spy on you may not be as scary as being watched by those you know:
“Mothers could search MySpace.com and find pictures of their children at a party when they were supposed to be studying at a friend’s house. Insurers could search and find a photo of a customer bungee-jumping, and raise the daredevil’s premiums…the tool will be invaluable to former (and future) boyfriends and girlfriends checking up on lovers.”
The rest of the article is available here.
By the way, Google may be interested in Riya. At least, that was the rumor a few weeks ago.
Topics: Search: Innovations |