Facial recognition available to public for first time on mobile

REUTERS, Dec 6 - For the first time ever, anyone can use real-time facial recognition technology on their phones to recognise people and unlock information about them - changing the way we communicate and connect to each other. Never before has technology combined augmented reality and artificial intelligence within smartphones, and now it's available for everyone to use.

Blippar - the technology company behind this breakthrough - has called this new feature in their app 'Face Profiles'. It lets people blipp (scan) any face using a mobile phone camera, either in person, or through a medium (including print and television) and unlock an instant augmented reality (AR) experience for anyone who has created and published their augmented reality face profile. For example, you could add your hobbies, opinions, augmented reality moods, likes and dislikes etc on your AR face profile.

On the day of launch (Tuesday 6 December 2016) 70,000 public figures (actors, politicians, scientists etc) will be recognisable with information drawn from Blipparsphere - Blippar's knowledge graph which pulls information from publicly accessible sources. The public can also create their own face profile straight away, by adding personalised content to express who they are.

Blippar's co-founder and CEO, Ambarish Mitra says it's a fun way to show who you are and learn more about others: "Over the years, science fiction movies have built up this theory that we will enter a world where these things become interesting. Photography has really changed human behaviour - this is an evolution..We feel that the behaviour already exists. We have seen historically in Blippar data when we were blipping cats and dogs, flowers and branded goods, the highest number of blipps were people blipping each other. This exists among us and this is the technology manifestation of it."

Facial recognition technology is already being used for many purposes, such as at airports, but it has never been given to consumers directly before.

The impact it could have on communication and social networking could be huge.

Tech and Innovation Expert Charles Leadbeater says: "I think it's definitely cutting edge and breakthrough. It takes us into a different place, because it's about using technology with human features, so your face becomes your natural form of expression and your digital form of expression." Blippar understands and respects that privacy is important to individuals. Users have full control of their Face Profile and its content and must optin in order to be discoverable. Users can set their profile as 'private' whenever they want. This is a fun and social experience."

I think it's definitely cutting edge and breakthrough. It takes us into a different place, because it's about using technology with human features, so your face becomes your natural form of expression and your digital form of expression