Benefits of AI Facial Recognition
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Benefits of AI Facial Recognition

2023/12/29

Facial recognition is often depicted in media as big brother (i.e. government) watching your every move. With many myths and misconceptions about facial recognition and it’s capabilities, user scenarios need to be addressed to understand where and how the technology can benefit both businesses and consumers. By better understanding this technology, people can make informed decisions that maximize the benefits of AI facial recognition.

During the pandemic facial recognition technology shined brightly in fields such as remote service enrollments, no-touch biometric access control, and health and mask monitoring. Through recognizing benefits like these, it’s possible to change perceptions and increase its acceptance of the technology among the greater public.

AI Facial Recognition Technology Misconceptions

No technology can be immediately considered good or bad technology; it is all based on the responsibility of the people who make use of it. The same can be said for facial recognition technology.

Many who argue that facial recognition technology is “bad” will often attribute it to issues of personal freedom and an invasion of privacy, especially in countries with governments and businesses that act more totalitarian and are eager to exert stringent public monitoring controls to preserve their power.

This isn’t to say that facial recognition technology can’t be abused in the free world. Similar to the advent of the internet, along with internet advertising, online media, and of course the rise of social media; the newness of technological advances may seem daunting at first and will face stages where they are largely seen as “bad.” Yet as time progresses, the pros of these technologies shine through to become essential parts of many advanced economies, diminishing the fears associated with new technologies.

CyberLink believes this will also hold true for facial recognition technology.

Benefits of AI Facial Recognition Technology

Facial recognition is one of the most secure and fastest biometric verification solutions on the market. Although there are many benefits a business may enjoy by adding facial recognition to their current workplaces, these are particularly beneficial:

Five Benefits of Facial Recognition Technology
  1. Increased safety and security for businesses, employees, and customers
  2. Enhanced protection from identity theft
  3. Higher accuracy and speed
  4. Ease of installation (flexibility and scalability)
  5. Improved productivity and customer satisfaction

Now let’s take a closer look at each of the benefits of AI Facial Recognition.

Increased safety and security for businesses, employees, and customers

For businesses, facial recognition biometrics systems can be used for security access control and surveillance, helping companies protect their valuable assets. For employees or customers, the safeguarding of personal assets in either the real world or digital domains helps increase the safety of those involved in businesses using AI facial recognition technology.

Enhanced protection from identity theft

Biometric technologies also aid in protecting an individual’s identity. The risk of identity theft is lowered when one uses their face as a main identifier or as a part of a 2-factor authentication system, rather than relying solely on a government-issued ID that can be stolen, such as a passport, ID card, or driver’s license.

Fortunately, CyberLink’s FaceMe® is especially secure, having achieved a perfect iBeta's Advanced Level 2 Anti-Spoofing Test score, ensuring that 2D fakes and even 3D printed, and resin facial masks could not fool the AI-enhanced facial recognition technology.

Higher accuracy and speed

Facial recognition technology allows businesses an accurate, smart, secure, and fast means of recognizing individuals in a large crowd. For companies desiring to quickly clock-in employees or grant only authorized personnel access to select buildings, solutions like FaceMe® are ideal.

On even the busiest of commercial premises, FaceMe® provides a potential 500+ frames per second face matching technology. Additionally, CyberLink’s FaceMe® has achieved a 99.83% accuracy rating in industry recognized NIST FRVT 1:N VISA Border tests, and the technology has a less than one in a million chance of incorrectly authenticating an individual.

Ease of installation (flexibility and scalability)

Installing and commissioning a business solution enhanced with AI facial recognition technology might sound like a costly endeavor to most, however, CyberLink’s FaceMe® is actually very easy to implement, use, and scale, capable of being tailored for various scenarios of all sizes and requirement. FaceMe® SDK enables partners to add facial recognition to their products, such as access control biometric readers, robotics, and more. FaceMe® Platform enables organizations to deploy facial recognition to their existing systems including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. For video surveillance, FaceMe® Security is a turnkey software solution already integrated with leading VMS brands like Milestone, Genetec, Axis, and more.

Compatible with a wide variety of operating systems including Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and others, FaceMe®’s degree of flexibility and scalability has made it easier than ever for organizations to upgrade to smart surveillance or smart access control systems without incurring big costs.

Improved productivity

Facial recognition-based systems cut down on the need for keys, fobs, and ID cards, all of which can be easily lost or stolen. Using contactless biometric technology like facial recognition engines also creates a more hygienic working environment.

Facial recognition time and attendance systems, for example, cut down the long check-in/out lines during rush hours. The systems also have the benefit of accurately compiling employee attendance records and simplifying payroll.

The banking, financial service, and insurance (BFSI) businesses are another segment that benefits from facial recognition as part of a rigorous eKYC (electronic Know You Customer) system. Thanks to facial recognition technology, industries like these benefit from anti-money laundering regulation compliance and safeguarding customer investments with more ease than before.

Common Concerns of Facial Recognition

Five Common Concerns of Facial Recognition Technology

Although facial recognition offers a powerful and efficient identity verification, we do want to also address the common concerns and hesitations that most businesses face before investing in this technology:

  1. Legal and privacy concerns
  2. Data vulnerabilities
  3. Computational requirements/costs

Let’s look at each of these possible concerns in-depth:

Legal and privacy concerns

Some individuals express concern about facial recognition systems storing their data in the form of photos and information about their physical activity. Many data privacy laws and regulations (such as GDPR, CCPA, BIPA, and LGPD), consider biometric information (not just photos) to be personal information and thus have installed strict requirements to safeguard personal privacy.

For example, under these regulatory laws, consumer data gathered by facial recognition systems can only be stored with consent and must be protected and allowed access/deletion rights just like any other form of stored digital data used by businesses today.

To stay compliant with these privacy laws, FaceMe® provides customers with these critical features:

  1. Active Facial Recognition: When a user’s face takes up more than 25% of the screen view, the system will ask if the user agrees to have their face data extracted. FaceMe® will only collect, analyze, and store this data when the user nods their head as a form of consent.
  2. Right to Erasure (AKA, Right to be Forgotten): FaceMe® also provides users with the right to delete their information upon request whenever they desire.
  3. Right to Data Portability: FaceMe® provides users the right to export their data whenever they desire.

For more information on privacy protection regulations in the United States, please see our white paper Responsibly Using Facial Recognition in the U.S.

Data vulnerabilities

facial recognition concerns about data vulnerabilities

Individuals have realized that digital technologies are naturally susceptible to data vulnerabilities from hackers and identity thieves. Although this is a reasonable concern, steps can be taken to significantly reduce the risk of such attacks.

CyberLink encourages customers to always keep their data protected by all reasonable means, taking necessary procedures such as keeping their software and underlying systems up to date, and regularly safeguarding their commitment to user access policies. This concern is not limited to facial recognition, as it is the same concern with regards to bank accounts, credit cards, and social security info being stolen.

Computational requirements/costs

Many businesses worry that facial recognition technology has large computational requirements to run such advanced software. Although it is true that the businesses that invest in more capable computer systems will be best suited to reap the benefits of faster processing, it is recognized that this may not be feasible for all businesses, which is why FaceMe® is designed to be scalable.

In many cases, customers can still use FaceMe® with only a compact smart device, another benefit of AI facial recognition. The use of a connected or AIoT/IoT device with a built-in or attached camera is enough to run FaceMe®.

There are many deployment options facilitated by FaceMe® SDK for business needs of all sizes. Developers are even able to enable GPU acceleration, utilizing OpenVino, NVIDIA Jetson, ARM, etc. to speed up deep-learning algorithms. Check our FaceMe® SDK System Requirements for more information.

Legal Considerations When Using Facial Recognition Technology

Legal considerations when using facial recognition technology

There has been a growing concern regarding facial recognition systems storing data, both in the form of photos and recorded movements. Although it is true that cameras facilitating facial recognition have the potential to capture and store data on associated computer equipment, companies using such technologies are still obligated to comply with certain rules and regulations that help safeguard individual privacy and allow users to request data deletion.

Some of these data privacy laws and regulations that biometric technology companies must adhere to include GDPR, CCPA, BIPA, and LGPD, as these guidelines consider biometric information to be personal information. Due to these institutions and their laws, facial recognition templates fall under these regulations, as would fingerprints or iris scans. Indeed, these issues are complex and regionally dependent, but they are nothing that companies considering facial recognition technology cannot handle.

CyberLink stresses the importance of taking the time to consider which type of facial recognition is best for the company, receiving user consent where legally required, and being rigorous in protecting such data and applying security software updates. Our Responsibly Using Facial Recognition in the U.S. white paper talks about how businesses in different states can lawfully use facial recognition to enhance security and productivity without violating users’ privacy. The white paper covers the following:

  • The different types of facial recognition and how they work
  • Why the handling of consent, data, and retention is key
  • A summary of existing laws at both the federal and state levels
  • How easy it is to use facial recognition responsibly and legally
Responsibly Using Facial Recognition in the U.S. white paper

FAQ

Facial recognition software is very reliable. CyberLink’s FaceMe® offers compliance to industry standards, ranking globally in NIST’s FRVT 1:1 (verification) & 1:N (authentication) benchmarks with 99.81% accuracy, and has been assessed to deliver a <0.000001 False Accept Rate, meaning the possibility to incorrectly identify a person is extremely low.
The level of safety provided by facial recognition solutions is extremely high. Biometrics are a boon to businesses and individuals because it verifies identities without physical keys or password input. The human face offers a great degree of complexity and individuality, making it an excellent choice among the range of biometric security checks available.
Moreover, FaceMe®’s highly reliable anti-spoofing protection, covering both 2D and 3D fraud attacks, means that other people won’t be able to fool the facial recognition system with photos, videos, masks, or dummies.
All biometric technologies in use today will be safer than a password. Passwords are vulnerable to many levels of attack and are typically weaker security measures, as they can be forgotten by users unless carefully recorded. Facial recognition, on the other hand, uses over 100 unique facial vectors and is mathematically defined for identity verification, making them safer than traditional passwords.
Fingerprints have a solid reputation and are a perfectly valid choice for biometric verification purposes. Both fingerprinting and facial recognition are highly accurate solutions to biometric security. However, facial recognition has more valuable inherent advantages in ease of use, hardware cost, and remote enrollment. Moreover, facial recognition is physically safer than fingerprinting because it works without individuals having to make physical contact with any sensors. This “touchless” feature made facial recognition adoption accelerate, especially during the pandemic era.
Businesses use facial recognition for a wide array of intents and purposes, the greatest demand being in the industries of security, timekeeping, fintech, and smart retail. For businesses and organizations with more niche or innovative ideas, the FaceMe® SDK allows developers to integrate the world’s top-rated facial recognition engine.

Read more Top 7 Use Cases for Facial Recognition in 2023

FaceMe®: CyberLink’s Complete Facial Recognition Solution

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