Facial Recognition Technology

Hello and welcome back. In the previous video, Hedieh gave you an introduction to artificial intelligence. In this video, she will tell you about a specific application of

AI: facial recognition technology. So what does facial recognition mean? Facial is an adjective. It comes from the noun face. So facial means related to the face. Recognition is a noun. It comes from the verb recognise. Recognise means that you know what something is because you have already seen it. So, facial recognition is a technology where machines recognise faces. For example, facial recognition technology is used to unlock phones. Some phones start working only when you show your face to the camera. The phone recognises your face because it has already seen your face. It knows it is your face and not someone else’s and lets you use the phone. The phone is using facial recognition technology.

So how does facial recognition technology work?

There are three main steps: detection, analysis and identification. These three words are all nouns. Let’s have a look at each one.

The first step is detection. In other words, the computer first understands that there is a face in front of it. It does this with the help of algorithms that tell the computer this is a face.

The second step is analysis. Analysis means to look at something in detail. So the AI system looks at the details of your face. For example, the shape of your face, the distance between your eyes, the shape of your eyes, cheeks and chin.

The final step is identification. This means the computer finds who the person is with that face. How does it find the face? The AI system checks the details of the face with thousands and thousands of faces. These are the faces of other people already saved on the computer system. It uses algorithms to make decisions about how similar or different the face is. Then it tells you when it finds a match. You have just heard some key concepts and vocabulary related to facial recognition technology. You will now have the opportunity to review and practise this vocabulary.