Apple apparently has decided to jump on the face-recognition band wagon. We are receiving news that the company has applied for a facial recognition patent intended for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Macbook devices. Of course, devices like Google Nexus already sport the feature, but Apple has in plan to provide something extra than your regular Ice Cream Sandwich offers. For starters, we know that Apple will be using a forward-facing camera that will be in charge of recognizing the individual user. Users will be enjoying customize applications, settings and features, all included in the users personal preferences.
This new feature would eliminate the need for protecting your device with a password or even manually accessing your home screen. Today, most facial recognition software face the challenge of matching faces, which is not the easiest tasks in the world. Things like varying angles and position of the users features have to be considered in order to avoid a mismatch in the image processor. Maybe Apple already has an answer to that. The patent application is called Low Threshold Face Recognition and describes in there we find the detailed description of the upcoming device and how its going to recognize faces with a "low-computation solution for reasonably effective (low threshold) face recognition that can be implemented on camera-equipped consumer portable appliances.".
The only problem remains the fact that its quite unclear how far the discrimination could go. What if somebody has similar looking buddies or family who likes to tap on their device when they are not looking? It might prove that facial recognition is not near as secure as good old fashion passwords.
Source: appadvice
