This porn site uses facial recognition technology and it’s a tad creepy

Recent advances in facial recognition technology has seen computers recognising, comparing and contrasting faces, and sometimes even deciphering nuances better than humans – for instance, (in)congruencies between what someone says (in words) and what that person expresses through their face. Although facial recognition technology has been met with scepticism (and even protests from privacy activists), today companies and citizens alike are starting to welcome its capabilities.

As recently as May of last year, Google banned the Google Glass app NameTag – which allowed people to take a picture of stranger and have instant access to their Facebook account, criminal records and so on – but today, it is being used by organisations like the FBI, and has even warmed the hearts of Google, Tesco and Facebook. Interestingly, porn sites are also embracing facial recognition technology – but in this context, it’s a little creepy.

GreatFap, the porn site that caters to heterosexual males, has an interesting little section called ‘Face Match’, which utilises one of Rekognition’s most widely adopted API functions FaceDetect. How does it work? If there’s a particular person that you’re sexually attracted to – be it a celebrity or someone you’ve met who doesn’t want to sleep with you – you can upload their picture and discover pornstars that look just like them. Subsequently, you’re able to watch pornos featuring a pornstar that looks like the woman of your fantasies. I suppose this feature is ideal for those who don’t have very rich imaginations.

Startup Daily decided to test out GreatFap’s Face Match feature using a photo of (none other than) Shoe String Media Group Founder Mat Beeche, and we were quite impressed by the results. There were clear facial resemblances between Mat and the pornstars appearing in the results. But unfortunately, due to the NSFW nature of the results, it would be inappropriate to attach the screenshot to this article. So, here’s something less explicit:

Behind Rekognition’s FaceDetect is some pretty mind-blowing matchmaking algorithms. It’s able to detect the faces in a photo, with the x, y, width and height of the eyes, nose and mouth, as well as various attributes such as emotion, race, gender, if wearing glasses, and so on. For those concerned about privacy, Rekognition is unable to detect someone’s identity – that is, put a name to a face.

But here’s where it gets a little complex. If someone’s enough of a scumbag to upload those nude pictures and videos you created just for them, or even private marital sex tapes – perhaps out of love – the world (including your grandparents) might find out. Someone might just upload a picture of you (which they will freely find on the internet because … selfies) onto a porn site that uses a facial recognition API. And they might just end up with 100 percent accurate results!

There’s nothing inherently wrong about taking a naughty pic – actress and comedienne Mindy Kaling completely approves – but ‘leaking’ nudes seems to a thing of the present. It happens so often to female celebrities (with responses varying from ‘tsk tsk’ to ‘what a whore’) that it’s become a phobia for many women – the same way cellulite is.