Most people knowAmazonas an
online retaile r, but the co mpany is
also a major provider of web apps and
services, and has been working on a
facial-recognition project called
Rekognition (bit.ly/reko481). This
allows developers to add visual
analysis fe atures to their applications,
so they can identify objects, people,text, scenes, activiti es and
inappropriate content in photos and
videos. The technology proved
controversial when Amazon offered it
to US police forces and government
agencies. The American Civil Li berties
Union (ACLU) Foundation described
Rekognition as “perha ps the most
dangerous surveillance te chnology
ever developed”.
In June,Microsoftdeleted
its MS Celeb database, an
enormous public dataset
containing10 million images
of roughl y 100,000 people,
which it and other companies
had been using to trai n
facial-recognition systems.
The co mpany has also called
on US politicians to regulate
recognition systems due to
their “broad societal
ramifi cations and potentialfor abuse”.
What’s more,
Microsoft is
reported to have
rejected a
request from
police to use
its technology
in car and
body cams.
However,
desp ite the
apparent change
of heart,
Microsoft still
has an Azure-
based facial recognition API called
Face, which detects and co mpar es
faces in images (bit.ly/face481).
Another experiment the co mpany has
beenrunning since 2015 is How-Old.
net (www.how-old.net), which tries to
guess your age – with mi xed results.HOW AMAZON AND MICROSOFT USEFACIAL RECOGNITIONIf you see something compromising on
Street View, ask Google to blur itRemove your face from the webCOVER
FEATURE7 - 20August 2019 43REMOVE YOURSELF FROM GOOGLEfaces’. You can turn off face grouping
completely, or disable the option to
‘Help contacts recognise your face’ ,
and ‘Show pets with people’.
If you find that photos of yourself
and other information appearin Google
Search, getting them removed can be
tricky, because most images in Google’s
search results come from non-Google
websites. If that’s the case, your best
bet is to speak to the webmaster of th e
original site. Google can remove images
from its search results if they have been
deleted fr om the original location – see
bit.ly/search481. Sensitive personal
information, such as nudephotos or
images containingbank details, can
be removed from Google by going to
bit.ly/photos481.
If your face appears in a YouTube
video andyou’d rather it didn’t, you can
contact the video uploader and ask
them to blur you out (which they will
prob ably prefer to taking the videodown). YouTube provides tools that
make the proc ess easier, although the
blur option isn’t currently available in
YouTube Studio beta (studio.youtube
.com). The channelowner will needto
select Crea tor Studio Classic in the left
menuto access it.
Google automatically blurs faces and
car numberplates from Street View
images , but if it missesone – or you
want it to blur something else, such as
your house, for example – you can
request this. Go towww.google.c om/
maps, find the prob lem on Street View,
then click the thre e dots in the address
box and click ‘Report a Problem’. The
next page asks you why you want to
report the image, and allows you to
request blurring of a face, a home, a car
licence plate or any other object.G
ooglePhotos has a ‘Group similar
faces’ feature that can show you
pictures of people and pets it
recognises. Due to differences in
privacy laws, the feature is unavailable
in some countries outside the US, so
although we found it on our devices,
there’ s no guarantee that you will.
There’ s co nfusion as to why some
people in the UK have it wh en they
probably shouldn’t, although possible
explanations include activati ng it while
using the device abroad or over a VPN.
If the feat ure is active on your device,
you can disable it by opening Google
Photos on your phone, selecting
Settings and then tapping ‘Group similarYou can ask Google to remove photos of
you from its search resultsGoogle Photos offers facial recognition
but not everyone has the feature