Study finds popular face ID systems may have racial bias

Tech giants have made some major strides in advancing facial recognition technology. But a new study, called'Gender Shades,' has found that it may not be working for all users, especially those who aren't white males. A researcher from the MIT Media Lab discovered that popular facial recognition services from Microsoft, IBM and Face vary in accuracy based on gender and race. A researcher from MIT tested popular facial recognition services and found that they experienced more errors when the used was a dark-skinned female. To illustrate this, researcher Joy Buolamwini created a data set using 1,270 photos of parliamentarians from three African nations and three Nordic countries. The faces were selected to represent a broad range of human skin tones, using a labeling system developed by dermatologists, called the Fitzpatrick scale.