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Face Tracking HP Webcam Can’t See Black People

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm by Jamie

So either the HP webcam is strictly in to chicks, or it’s horribly racist!

Here’s the official word from HP:

Some of you may have seen or heard of a YouTube video in which the facial-tracking software didn’t work for a customer. We thank Desi, and the people who have seen and commented on his video, for bringing this subject to our attention.

We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting. While we work on this, take a look here for more information on the impact of lighting on facial tracking software, and how to optimize your webcam experience: http://bit.ly/7HsZHD

We will continue to listen to you and work to deliver great experiences. We invite you to connect with us on the discussion boards and forums here on The Next Bench or on Twitter at @HP_PC.

I thought the contrast was pretty good when Desi went right up to the camera and the picture adjusted to focus in on his features. It just didn’t recognize what it was focusing on as a face. I think Desi’s good-natured attitude in the video makes this absolutely hysterical, but I want to know more about the testing process before the camera got on the shelf. Is skin color usually something that’s considered when developing face recognition software or are engineers more concerned with recognizing shapes and features like eyes and noses?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Dumb Ass, Skynet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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5 Responses to “Face Tracking HP Webcam Can’t See Black People”

  1. AvatarJenS
    Posted: Dec 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 pm
    1

    Wow, that’s pretty odd. I work for a company who’s products have been using face recognition in our products for about two years and I can’t ever recall an instance where contrast or lighting would keep it from focusing on a black person, but work just fine on a white person. Of course ours doesn’t function based on contrast, it works based on looking for collections of certain features.

  2. AvatarWayne
    Posted: Dec 22nd, 2009 at 11:01 pm
    2

    Wow. That’s just freakin’ hillarious! I’m amazed that they apparently didn’t test with people of different skin tones.

  3. AvatarFmF
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2009 at 2:36 am
    3

    And you wonder why HP’s are separated so far apart from black berries.They aren’t even allow in the same school’s or school in general.Cant stop thinking of slightly wrong racist computer jokes.I’m wondering if it just black people or is there other ethnicity it don’t like.I demand to know the extent of it bigotry.OK ill try to stop making the joke’s but it hard.Seem like they just didn’t test it so well.Probably was trying to rush it for the holiday seals i have to thank them for giving me something to laugh at.

  4. Avatarfiftywan
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2009 at 2:43 am
    4

    second official statement from HP: “sorry folks, but the only people we had in the building to test this thingamajig on were either latinos or asians. Next factory should be offshored to South Africa, and solve that problem.”

  5. AvatarDan
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2009 at 6:41 am
    5

    I’ve known HP was racist ever since my printer refused a cartridge of black ink…

    All jokes aside, it sounds like they simply made a mistake in how they programmed the facial recognition. Focus on contrast instead of facial topography may be the main problem, though given the vast variety in facial topography it may have simply been that contrast seemed to be the easier route for faster response time.

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