Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS FEATURE

Is facial recognition too biased to be let loose?

The technology is improving — but the bigger issue is how it’s used.
  1. Davide Castelvecchi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

When London’s Metropolitan Police tested real-time facial-recognition technology between 2016 and 2019, they invited Daragh Murray to monitor some of the trials from a control room inside a police van.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 587, 347-349 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03186-4

Additional reporting by Antoaneta Roussi and Richard Van Noorden.

References

  1. Fussey, P. & Murray, D. Independent Report on the London Metropolitan Police Service’s Trial of Live Facial Recognition Technology (Univ. Essex, 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Buolamwini, J. & Gebru, T. Proc. Mach. Learn. Res. 81, 77–91 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Grother, P., Ngan, M. & Hanaoka, K. Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 2: Identification (NIST, 2019).

  4. Grother, P., Ngan, M. & Hanaoka, K. Ongoing Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 1: Verification. Updated 10 September 2020 (NIST, 2020).

  5. Grother, P., Ngan, M. & Hanaoka, K. Face Recognition Vendor Test Part 3: Demographic Effects (NIST, 2019).

  6. Feldman Barrett, L., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M. & Pollak, S. D. Psychol. Sci. Public Interest 20, 1–68 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Raji, I. D. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00964 (2020).

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links