Amazon-owned smart home company Ring has begun to roll out its AI-based Familiar Faces facial recognition technology that will identify and name visitors to your home via the video doorbell camera.
The controversial update announced in September will enable Ring Video Doorbell owners to build a database of up to 50 people they know.
So, the app notifications might let you know when your family members or the postman is at your front door. It’ll can also reduce the unnecessary notifications that come from people who are supposed to be there showing up on the doorstep. Amazon said it “empowers customers to reduce notifications triggered by familiar people’s routine activities.”
Meanwhile, it might be interesting to know that mum has been by with a bit of shopping while you’re at work or the kids are home from school. However, the technology has been criticised by organisations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“Today’s feature to recognise your friend at your front door can easily be repurposed tomorrow for mass surveillance,” the EFF wrote in a blog post when the feature was announced.
“Ring’s close partnership with police amplifies that threat. For example, in a city dense with face recognition cameras, the entirety of a person’s movements could be tracked with the click of a button, or all people could be identified at a particular location. A recent and unrelated private-public partnership in New Orleans unfortunately shows that mass surveillance through face recognition is not some far flung concern.”
There are also deep concerns over the legality of people’s facial biometrics being captured and tracked without their express consent. I can’t imagine people are going to ask the postman for permission, for example. Amazon says it will never share the facial recognition data, which is encrypted. Unnamed faces will be removed after 30 days, the company says.
