Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Racist Camera?

This is actually kind of amusing. Dark skinned Desi and light skinned Wanda demonstrate the HP’s MediaSmart webcam tracking software can track her but not him.

HP says:

We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting. Voodoo Blog

… and…

It has been reported that lighting conditions can affect the performance of the face tracking feature. To improve performance of the face tracking feature try to increase the light to the face while decreasing the amount of light in the background. HP Support

When skin is dark, there isn’t much of a contrast between the eyes and upper cheek in anything other than studio lighting. Sounds like HP’s partners didn’t do much testing for real world conditions. Even my Canon SD800IS camera has a face auto detection feature which seems to have a hard time when dark skinned faces are in shadow. Here is where it is good not to be black enough. 🙂

P.S. Did you notice how he almost called Wanda his wife. Freudian miscegenation?


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One response to “Racist Camera?”

  1. khayla . Avatar
    khayla .

    dhat qetz on mha nerves soo muchh .
    racistt people , dey neeeda qoonnn sumwhere .
    wastinn ppls money n stuff , deyy needa be smackeddd .

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