About two months ago, an application called FindFace became
viral in Russia. The reason is simple, the software that's made by 26-year-old
Artem Kukharenko, and 29-year-old Alexander Kabakov is able to identify a
person just by using a photo, and its accuracy is claimed to reach 70 percent.
There are only two conditions that must be met: You have a picture of the
person you want to find, and he has a social networking account.
For now, FindFace can only work with the popular social
media platform in Russia, Vkontakte - save more than 200 million accounts. The
app is able to search an identity in the database that contains a billion more
images in a few seconds. Furthermore, FindFace will find the closest results
plus ten best alternatives. Developers explain that the app can be used by the
authorities, but of course you can imagine other scenarios of FindFace
usage.
The secret of FindFace capability lies in advanced
algorithms created by Kukharenko. Unlike other face recognition technology, the
algorithm allows quick searches in big data sets. “Three million searches in a
database of nearly 1bn photographs: that’s hundreds of trillions of
comparisons, and all on four normal servers. With this algorithm, you can
search through a billion photographs in less than a second from a normal
computer,” said Kabakov, during an interview at the company’s modest central
Moscow office.
Kabakov also said that the app could revolutionize dating:
“If you see someone you like, you can photograph them, find their identity, and
then send them a friend request.”
However, the FindFace capability also brings a great
opportunity to disturb someone's privacy on the Internet, and will open the app
exploitation for negative things. There's online harassment related to the use
of FindFace, but the developers feel confident that their creation could help
people. As a proof, by using FindFace the Russian police can solve a case that
has been pending for years.
So far, FindFace has collected more than 500 thousand users
and process three million search engines. Currently FindFace can't be implemented
to Facebook because the photos in Facebook are much more difficult to be
accessed than in Vkontakte.