How Facial Recognition is the next big disruption

Witness FR Technology truly coming of age!

Still using a key to unlock your door and punching attendance on the fingerprints readers? Well, it’s time to move on people; time to use Facial Recognition or ‘FR’ to change the way we live. Facial recognition technology is truly coming of age. Soon we’ll be using our faces to pass through airport security, making payments, catch trains, and a lot more.

Facial Recognition is not a new concept. Facebook invariably recognizes the appropriate individual’s face in a picture to tag and smartphones are making it a breeze to earmark photos of our friends and families and organize them. And it just doesn’t stop here, the power of FR is not confined to these areas only. In China, employees are already using their faces to gain entry in their office premises. Retailers and high-end hotels in Europe are making use of FR to identify special customers to make sure they are treated well. Airports in Australia are having a system installed that allows passengers pass through security without passports.

Professor Lyndon Smith, professor of Computer Simulation and Machine Vision at the University of West of England says, “Everybody’s face is slightly different, so it’s almost like a 3D fingerprint.” Professor Smith is trying to develop a system that can be used to replace train tickets. Quite similar to the new iPhone, the system uses infrared scanning that can identify patterns in facial features and compares them with a database of studied facial patterns.

According to the experts, facial recognition systems can be extremely definitive. The technology when coupled with innovative thinking shows that FR can surely be the next big disruption. Traditionally associated with the security sector, this technology is actively expanding into other industries like retail, marketing, and health. It is estimated that by 2022, the global facial recognition technology market will generate $ 9.6 billion in revenue with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 21.3 percent.

There are several powerful applications of Artificial Intelligence in the Facial Recognition technology market that can provide business leaders with an insight into the latest and emerging trends that may impact their business.

1) Security — The use of facial biometrics is enormous, especially where security is concerned. With the integration of FR technology with physical devices, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics can now be accessed via owner’s facial features. Some significant examples are Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi Corp who have installed FR in their latest phones. But this is just the tip of the iceberg as in future you will be able to get in your car, house, and other physical locations by just looking at them.

2) Payments — You don’t have to be a genius to find out why every business wants payments to be made easy. Fintech advancements have introduced new ways of paying for things with contactless cards and NFC for phones. But with Facial Recognition, you will never need a form of payment in future. China, a global leader in FR technology, has a KFC branch in the city of Hangzhou where customers can pay for their meals with just a facial scan that is linked to their Alibaba Alipay account. Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, refers to it as the ‘Smile to Pay’ technology.

3) Criminal Identification — Police and Law enforcement departments around the world are too keen to integrate facial recognition to curb criminal activities. The United States FBI is using a unique machine learning algorithm to identify suspects from their driving licenses. There are reports that Walmart was taking help of FR technology in some of its stores in order to single out shoplifters, but stopped that later.

So, the bottom line is that Facial Recognition is already out there although it’s debatable how it should be used without invading an individual’s privacy. But with a predicted worth of $ 15 billion by 2025, Facial Industry is surely an industry worth watching.