Melbourne?s Deakin University is developing facial scanning hardware that could provide an immediate estimation of a computer user’s age by examining facial features.
The researchers told News Ltd:
Automatic estimations of someone?s age could be used in software to stop young internet users accessing pornography, to provide an alternative to fingerprint scanning and help police in the identification of suspects.
?In extensive experiments of over 2000 faces, our method outperformed the existing approaches,? Prof Smith-Miles said.
Of course, anyone aged between 15 and 25 is likely to be misjudged by such technology. It would be a case of older looking 14 year olds watching hardcore lesbian action, and fresh looking 23 year olds confined to Disney.com. Heck, someone like Rove Mcmanus would likely have to settle for quick peeks at Bras ‘n’ Things catalogues.
The technology is interesting, but an efficient method of restricting access to pornography, hardly. Where this type of tech becomes a serious concern is in public settings. Imagine if libraries or Internet cafes were forced to roll out this sort of equipment.
