Facebook's algorithm delivers an accuracy rate of 83%

Jun 23, 2015 07:44 GMT  ·  By
Facebook will be able to recognize people in photos, even if they have their face covered up
   Facebook will be able to recognize people in photos, even if they have their face covered up

Yann LeCun, head of the Artificial Intelligence department at Facebook, has presented an experimental algorithm at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Boston that can recognize people even if their faces are covered up.

"There are a lot of cues we use. People have characteristic aspects, even if you look at them from the back," said LeCun for science news website New Scientist.

Testing the system with over 40,000 photos pulled from Flickr, Facebook reported an accuracy rate of 83%, which is quite impressive for the task it was programmed to carry out.

The algorithm is, of course, still not yet live on the site, but if employed, it can seriously improve usage of the tagging feature, which even if quite useful, still relies on human users to do the tagging.

Potential use cases for this new feature are not only limited to Facebook's main service, but the newly launched Facebook Moments app as well.

Facebook Moments works by going through your photos using facial recognition software, and then telling you in which friends are in which photos. This lets you share photos on Facebook much easier and faster, by not having to go through all images one by one.

If this new algorithm were implemented, Facebook Moments will be able to recognize friends, even if they have their faces covered.

Facebook is heavily investing in AI

Face recognition software is nothing new, being an advanced form of pattern recognition algorithms, tailored to detect specific traits of the human face.

Developed to advance AI courses via university studies, the software quickly made its way into law enforcement, being slowly introduced into more and more programs and applications, even with social networks, Facebook being its main proponent.

The company has been heavily investing in AI technology, recently opening at the start of June a dedicated AI Research Center in Paris, France.

The reason behind its decision is France's and EU's reputation for training talented AI engineers, Mr. LeCun being from Paris himself.

Facebook is not alone in its quest for a better AI, Google only a few days back showcasing an AI system that's capable of rendering realistic-looking images.