Is facial recognition coming to the mainstream?

Facial recognition is big news for fall 2017, with Apple bringing the technology to its new iPhone X and Facebook trialing it as a means of verifying ownership when recovering accounts. Although still subject to some reliability issues, could this long-dreamed-of procedure be set to become part of our daily lives in the long term?

As well as its borderless display, the iPhone X will above all stand out from Apple’s other devices with its facial-recognition technology, which the brand is calling FaceID. While most current manufacturers’ high-end handsets feature a fingerprint reader or iris scanner to unlock devices, Apple has upped the game by rolling out facial recognition, using various sensors built into the smartphone.

Face ID is billed as a secure way of unlocking the smartphone, authenticating users and authorizing payments. The technology works with the TrueDepth camera, which uses several sensors to analyze more than 30,000 points on the face, even in low light and/or when the user’s appearance changes (glasses, beard, etc.) thanks to an automatic learning system. The Apple iPhone X will be available to preorder from October 27, 2017, shipping from November 3, with prices starting at $999.

However, this is by no means a first in …read more