The iPhone X’s Face ID was supposed to be one of the most exciting new features that came with the brand new smartphone. However, it seems like there have been some issues in regards to how Artificial Intelligence (AI) recognizes these faces. A woman in China purchased two different iPhone Xs after the facial recognition program could not differentiate between her and her colleague.
A Chinese woman who is only identified by her last name, Yan, was given two refunds by Apple after the AI facial recognition technology allowed her colleague to unlock her phone on separate occasions.
Apple has yet to comment.
Yan is said to be from Nanjing in East China and during an interview with the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, she said that even after personally configuring the phone to recognize her face, her Chinese colleague was able to unlock her phone on every attempt.
When Yan called the Apple support helpline she claimed that the staff did not believe her. She then went to the nearest Apple store to illustrate the problem to their staff.
The store then offered Yen a refund thinking that the camera was to blame.
Yen then used the refund to buy another iPhone X which turned out to have the exact same problem.
This led the store workers to suggest that the issue must be a part of the software itself and not due to the camera.
It is unclear at the time of writing whether or not she purchased the third iPhone and when Newsweek reached out to Apple for a comment, they did not receive a reply.
This is not the first time that Apple has had problems with their Face ID. But Apple was so sure that the problem was resolved that they wrote this in their security guide. ‘The probability that a random person in the population could look at your iPhone X and unlock it using Face ID is approximately 1 in 1,000,000 (versus 1 in 50,000 for Touch ID).’
In 2015, Google Photos sparked controversy after they tagged two African American friends as gorillas. Then in 2009, Nikon’s camera software incorrectly labelled an East Asian face as blinking.
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