Enter Your Username and Say Cheese: Facial Recognition in Practice at Alibaba
How Alibaba is bringing facial recognition to the fore throughout the office
Over the last few weeks, Alibaba employees started noticing something peculiar going on around them. At the start of each work day, people have been logging in to the Alibaba intranet not by entering a password, but by:
Looking sharp…
…smiling for a few seconds…
…and gazing into the lens of a camera.
For a brief moment even those more dour workmates come to life, smiling bashfully and fluttering their eyelashes as the camera scans their face and logs them in.
Note: The above GIFs are screenshots taken by the person whose face is being scanned.
The reason behind this novel addition to our morning routine? Alibaba has officially launched its facial recognition platform for logging in to the company’s intranet.
This new technology, developed by the account team working under the Alibaba Information Platform, enables Alibaba employees to log in to the intranet without entering a password or using a third-party means of authentication, such as a QR code or text message. All we now have to do is let the camera scan our faces and we’re in, which is a convenience that has radically improved user experience.
Security First
The account team is responsible for guaranteeing security and maintaining an optimal user experience for all Alibaba employees when they access networks. Many employees use a whole host of different accounts on a daily basis — from regular domain accounts to Wangwang accounts, Alibaba Cloud accounts, development and test accounts, and more. With the old method of logging in, we used to have to enter a password for each one — a process that wasn’t just a hassle, but also ran the risk of employees forgetting their passwords, not to mention the countless security issues.
So, the team got to thinking: was there not a more convenient and reliable way to log in to the intranet that could ensure security but retain uniformity in terms of experience?
And then it came to them — facial recognition!
To get the ball rolling with setting up the facial scan platform, the account team got in touch with ZOLOZ, experts in the field of facial recognition technology.
Fresh Faces, Fresh Ideas
“We started off with a number of login methods in mind, but in the end, we settled on voice recognition and facial recognition as the ones to pursue,” says Chen Qinlin, a project manager in the Alibaba account team. “But voices can be quite easy to reproduce, and what’s more, for voice recognition to work well, your work setting needs to be relatively quiet. After some deliberation, we decided that, facial recognition would be the most convenient method to use in Alibaba offices.”
According to Qinlin, accuracy is paramount when it comes to the scan, and account and device information must always be consistent with facial data. To ensure security, the team insisted on both device authentication and face verification. “Device authentication ensures the security of the environment, and stringent live verification is also used during the facial recognition process to stop people from logging in to the wrong account.”
However, as you can imagine in any busy office, the camera can often inadvertently capture multiple people’s faces, meaning that the system had to be able to monitor distance, range, and accuracy, among others, simultaneously. This means that while you may not be able to log in easily if five people are staring into the camera at the same time, if someone passes by in the background as your face is being scanned, logging in won’t be a problem.
Safe, Reliable, and Convenient
Alibaba relies on the ZOLOZ team’s world-leading live verification algorithm, which is such that if you blink, cover part of your face with your hand, bow your head slightly, make a face, or wear a lot of makeup, the system can still quickly identify you.
“Logging in with our faces is safer and more reliable than our previous method of logging in. The operation experience is also quite different,” says Wang Wenhui, an engineer in the account team. He goes on to explain that the new login only takes an average 1.081 seconds from collecting and compressing the photo to using instant messaging technology to upload it to the server for comparison.
Besides being safe and fast, the facial recognition technology helps those afflicted with a bad memory, who can escape the recurring nightmare that is periodically changing one’s password and being forced to remember it. Indeed, the team is currently trying to circumvent this problem by implementing a biometric login solution.
The Future is Bright
In addition to being used to log in to the intranet, facial recognition technology has also long been used at Alibaba Group to make the lives of employees that little bit easier.
For example, when you arrive at work in the morning, you can go through security by scanning your face:
If you want to pick up a parcel, kiss goodbye to pick-up codes — just scan your face:
And to get access to certain meeting rooms and VIP rooms — you guessed it — all you need is your face:
Employees are able to pay for food in the canteen using only their faces.
The era of facial recognition has clearly arrived! What do you think will come next?
(Original article by Alibaba Information Platform)
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