{"id":123688,"date":"2025-10-15T13:17:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/123688\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T13:17:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:17:15","slug":"when-face-recognition-doesnt-know-your-face-is-a-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/123688\/","title":{"rendered":"When Face Recognition Doesn\u2019t Know Your Face Is a Face"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you don\u2019t include people with disabilities or people with facial differences in the development of these processes, no one\u2019s going to think of these issues,\u201d says Kathleen Bogart, a psychology professor at Oregon State University who specializes in disability research and lives with a facial difference. \u201cAI has amplified these issues, but it\u2019s rooted in long-standing underrepresentation and prejudice towards people with facial differences that occurred long before AI was a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Too Little, Too Late<\/p>\n

When face verification systems fail, it\u2019s often hard to find help\u2014piling more pressure on a stressful situation. For months, Maryland resident Noor Al-Khaled has struggled to create an online account with the Social Security Administration. Al-Khaled, who lives with the rare cranio-facial condition Ablepheron Macrostomia<\/a>, says having an online account would allow her to easily access SSA records and quickly send documents to the agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t drive because of my vision; I should be able to rely on the site,\u201d Al-Khaled says. \u201cYou have to take a selfie, and the pictures have to match,\u201d Al-Khaled says. \u201cBecause of the facial difference, I don’t know if it\u2019s not recognizing the ID or the selfie, but it\u2019s always saying images don\u2019t match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not having that access makes life harder. \u201cOn an emotional level, it just makes me feel shut out from society,\u201d she explains. Al-Khaled says that all services should provide alternative ways for people to access online systems. \u201cThe lack of other fallback options means that sometimes people get trapped in these labyrinths of technological systems,\u201d says Byrum from Present Moment Enterprises.<\/p>\n

\"Woman\"<\/p>\n

Courtesy of WIRED source<\/p>\n

An SSA spokesperson says alternative options to face verification are available, and it is \u201ccommitted\u201d to making its services accessible to everyone. The agency, the spokesperson says, does not run facial recognition systems itself but uses Login.gov and ID.me for verification services. The General Services Administration, which runs Login.gov, did not respond to WIRED\u2019s request for comment. \u201cAccessibility is a core priority<\/a> for ID.me,\u201d a spokesperson for ID.me says, adding it has previously helped people with facial differences and offered to directly help Al-Khaled after WIRED was in touch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are few things more dehumanizing than being told by a machine that you\u2019re not real because of your face,\u201d says Corey R. Taylor<\/a>, a New York\u2013based actor and motivational speaker who lives with a craniofacial anomaly. Last year, Taylor says, he was using a financial app to access a small amount of money; as he tried to complete the payment processes, he found that the face verification system could not match his selfie to the image on his ID. To get the system to work, he had to move into different positions. \u201cI had to literally raise my eyes and contort my face,\u201d Taylor says. When he emailed the company, he got what appeared to be a boilerplate response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you don\u2019t include people with disabilities or people with facial differences in the development of these processes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,611,289,290,18,13813,75246,19,17,610,824,11994,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-123688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-algorithms","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ethics","14":"tag-face-recognition","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-machine-learning","18":"tag-privacy","19":"tag-regulation","20":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}