How Facial Recognition is Shaping the Future of Marketing Innovation
Facial recognition technology is something that most of us take for granted. We’ve casually noticed that our smartphones now organize photos by people, or that Facebook somehow always knows the right friends to tag. But until recently, most people haven’t realized that this technology is less of a “cool trick” and will actually significantly shape the way we do business in the next five to ten years.
The technology is already being tested out in many different industries for vastly different purposes. For example, security scanners at the airport use it to allow e-passport holders to clear customs more easily; as facial recognition improves, Customs and Border Protection will be able to weed out travelers with fake passports more easily. Also, facial recognition is now being rolled out to further government facilities and businesses that require a high level of security clearance. Through use of this technology, security professionals can easily run realtime criminal searches using CCTV.
If you’re constantly buying online (like me), it may have been a while since you stepped into your local mall or a mainstreet store, but large retailers are now using facial recognition to step up their game and compete with online shopping shopping sites by using intelligent technology to instantly recognize customers and target offers based on their buying preferences. They can also use it to catch shoplifters in the act, a system that Walmart has already implemented in several of its stores.
If it’s the first time your noggin has appeared on their screens, they will begin to build up a profile for you based on your in-store actions. For example, the amount of time you spend in a certain area, your path around the store and the items you pick up.
The entertainment industry, casinos and theme parks have also caught on to its uses. They can hand tourists photos of themselves during their stay, or keep an eye on customers and any suspicious activity. And we’re just at the tip of the iceberg as to what facial recognition can do for industries like banking and fintech.
NTechLab is one of the prominent players in developing artificial intelligence algorithms and more specifically, facial recognition technology. In fact, at the end of 2015, they beat Google and nearly one-hundred other teams around the world in the University of Washington’s MegaFace competition.
