DeepFace


DeepFace is a deep learning facial recognition system created by a research group at Facebook. It identifies human faces in digital images. It employs a nine-layer neural network with over 120 million connection weights and was trained on four million images uploaded by Facebook users. DeepFace shows human-level performance. The Facebook Research team has stated that the DeepFace method reaches an accuracy of 97.35% ± 0.25% where human beings have 97.53%. This means that DeepFace is sometimes more successful than the human beings. It also leaves behind the FBI's Next Generation Identification system which have 85% performance One of the creators of the software, Yaniv Taigman, came to Facebook via their 2007 acquisition of Face.com.

Commercial rollout

Facebook started rolling out the technology to its users in early 2015, with the exception of users in the EU due to data privacy laws there.

Academic analysis

The software was the subject of graduate-level artificial intelligence coursework in 2015.

Reactions

AI researcher Ben Goertzel said Facebook had "pretty convincingly solved face recognition" with the project, but said it would be incorrect to conclude that deep learning is the entire solution to AI.
A Huffington Post piece called the technology "creepy" and, citing data privacy concerns, noted that some European governments had already required Facebook to delete facial-recognition data. According to Broadcasting & Cable, both Facebook and Google had been invited by the Center for Digital Democracy to attend a 2014 National Telecommunications and Information Administration "stakeholder meeting" to help develop a consumer privacy Bill of Rights, but they both declined. Broadcasting & Cable also noted that Facebook had not released any press announcements concerning DeepFace, although their research paper had been published earlier in the month. Slate said the lack of publicity from Facebook was "probably because it's wary of another round of 'creepy' headlines".