In another case, police in the same county used the technology in another retail establishment to identify a “man using a credit card that was later reported as stolen.” Because of the angle and graininess of the photo, police officers had difficulty identifying the individual.
Facial recognition technology will likely lead to more collaboration between police and retailers, said Scharg. Another company called FaceFirst specializes in bringing their facial recognition technology to retailers. “They can identify for retailers folks who have been identified as shoplifters at some point in the past or folks who have been identified as criminals at some point in the past so that the retailers can keep tabs on those people when they walk through their stores or not let them walk into their stores to begin with,” Scharg said. “That is so dangerous. I’m more concerned about bringing the surveillance aspect of it to the private sector than I am about the private sector selling their technology to the public.”
In any case, both retailers and law enforcement are likely to make greater use of facial recognition technology as it grows more powerful and less expensive.
The Chinese company Face++ is already offering facial recognition technology for a variety of mind-bending applications. The technology enables retail customers to make mobile payments using face and visit tourist destinations without a paper ticket. Some store owners are using the technology to greet customers by name. While the cultural environment in the United States is less receptive to such use cases, facial recognition technology will likely gain ground here because of its identity authentication advantages. “Biometrics is the last frontier of the effective way to manage identities,” Tran said. And as such, the technology will likely be used for “fintech and IoT payment scenarios. Tech companies like Facebook, Apple, IBM and others have aggressively invested in the technology, laying the groundwork for an expanded set of applications in coming years. He concluded: “eCommerce platforms like Amazon and others will likely be the largest adopters of this technology.”