Amazon defends face-recognition service
tom.pullar-strecker@stuff.co.nz
Technology giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) says it will only support ‘‘responsible’’ and legal uses of facial recognition amid growing concerns about the technology in New Zealand and overseas.
AWS, which is a subsidiary of United States e-commerce company Amazon.com, has made facial recognition more accessible via a service called Amazon Rekognition, which lets organisations access powerful software with no up-front investment, and in some cases for free.
Its cloud-based software has an add-on that automatically detects and identifies prominent people, including politicians, businesspeople and media figures, in video footage uploaded by customers.
AWS says that feature has been designed to include ‘‘as many celebrities as possible’’ and it is ‘‘constantly adding new names’’.
New Zealand supermarket giant Foodstuffs, which owns New World and Pak’n Save, was using facial recognition to spot known shoplifters when they entered some of its stores, although spokeswoman Antoinette Laird said it was using a different system to Amazon Rekognition. Amazon Web Services
Dozens of non-profit organisations including the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday to express ‘‘profound concerns’’ over Amazon Rekognition, saying it posed a ‘‘grave threat to communities, including people of colour and immigrants’’.
They noted Amazon’s claims that the software could identify people in real time by instantaneously searching databases containing tens of millions of faces, and contained a ‘‘person tracking’’ feature that makes investigation and monitoring of individuals easy and accurate for ‘‘surveillance applications’’.
‘‘As advertised, Rekognition is a powerful surveillance system readily available to violate rights,’’ the letter said.
AWS lets people upload photographs of up to 1000 people for matching against up to 1000 minutes of video footage a month at no cost for a year, under its ‘‘free tier’’ offer.
The company last month announced an update to Rekognition which it said made it 80 per cent more accurate in distinguishing between people who looked very similar to each other.
The New York Times reported that AWS’s ‘‘aggressive push’’ into facial recognition was putting the tech giant at the centre of an ‘‘increasingly heated debate’’.
AWS spokesman Peter Witts initially said the company would not comment on whether it imposed any controls on the use of Amazon Rekognition when first contacted by
last week – including whether it required photographs to be obtained with those subjects’ permission, or legally.
However, following publication of the US protest letter, he released a statement from AWS that said it did require ‘‘customers comply with the law and be responsible when they use AWS services’’.
AWS would not clarify what it might consider unreasonable use, or which country’s law would apply. The nearest data centre that offers Amazon Rekognition as a cloud service is in Sydney.
Rekognition had useful applications including helping agencies find abductees, the statement said.
‘‘The royal wedding that just occurred this past weekend used Rekognition to identify wedding attendees and the utility of artificial intelligence services like this will only increase,’’ the statement said.
‘‘Our quality of life would be much worse today if we outlawed new technology because some people could choose to abuse the technology ... We require our customers to comply with the law and be responsible when using Amazon Rekognition.’’