Intel researchers propose AI that recognizes faces from thermal images

Is thermal imagery detailed enough to enable an AI model to recognize people's facial features? That's the question Intel and Gánsk University of Technology researchers sought to answer in a study recently presented at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' 12th International Conference on Human System Interaction. These researchers investigated the performance of a model trained on visible light data that was subsequently retrained on thermal images. As the researchers point out in a paper describing their work, thermal imagery is often used in lieu of RGB camera data within environments where privacy is preferred or otherwise mandated, like medical facilities. That's because it's able to obscure personally identifying details like eye color and jaw line.