We are less than two weeks away from Google Pixel 4 series launch and Google is making efforts to keep it under wraps until the official reveal. One of the most sought after features is its face scan that will use radar systems in order to detect and recognize faces and grant access. Apparently, to create a resonating and perfect facial recognition system, Google has been collecting facial data in Atlanta, the United States and the process has been groped in controversies.
According to a report published by the New York Daily News, Google hired a recruitment agency called Randstad in order to conduct a ‘field research’ where these temporary Google employees were tasked with collecting facial data as it will be helpful in training the machine learning algorithm that would enable the facial recognition system to detect faces well.
However, the controversy is, Google temps used various illegitimate ways to source these datasets. For starters, they ask people to play with the home or try out a new app or state at a moving doubt and handed a $5 gift card for it. Here, the temps didn’t even inform unwitting people that they are being filmed or scanned. The report further added that Google employees actually scanned a lot of faces of homeless people who as per Google are less likely to talk to media about the same. Furthermore, Google also instructed employees to grab a dataset consisting of people of color as well.
Recognizing the faces of people with darker skin complexion has been a problem for face unlock feature which does make it a legitimate reason. Anyways, Google has perhaps suspended its field research after the New York Daily News report fall out. Although it wouldn’t permanently suspend the process but it has hit a break of it at this moment until it completes the probing that it has launched to know more about how these contractors acquired facial scans with or without consent.
