Smile, peruser of the internet! Your facial features are being codified by algorithms.
Starting this week, Google has begun asking users to take a video selfie to sign into their accounts, Search Engine Watch found. The feature remains optional, but it represents an eerie step towards making facial recognition a standard way to navigate the web, which the search engine giant is now heavily promoting.
Google first announced the feature in July, framing it as an optional way of getting into your account if you’re locked out or don’t have access to your usual devices.
To set it up, you record a short video of your face while moving your head to capture different angles. Then, if “you’re having trouble signing in later on,” Google said in the announcement, “you just take another selfie to get back into your account.”
What’s new now is that Google has begun pushing the feature on its home page. A nudge at the bottom of the screen will ask you to “sign in with a selfie,” with “don’t set up” and “set up selfie” options.
It sounds like it’ll be used for more than just verifying you’re the account owner. A disclaimer on the setup page says that the video selfie will also determine if you’re “old enough to use certain Google services.” Users can also opt-in to “improve Google services,” which will allow the company to use your video selfies to “improve our facial recognition, age estimation, and other verification methods that use your physical features or movement, across Google services.”
Needless to say, it raises obvious privacy and security concerns. Google already collects troves of behavioral data on its billions of users to optimize its search engine and deliver targeted ads, so handing over a mathematical map of your face is concentrating a lot of your personhood with one company. Moreover, in an age of increasingly convincing and accessible AI deepfake technology, it’s uncertain how robust facial recognition scans will be against attempts to spoof them.
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