Photos fool cigarette age-verification software

[Necuno]

...i can see this now working for the Juvenile delinquency

http://www.guru3d.com/news/photos-fool-cigarette-ageverification-software/


A Japanese reporter has used family photos and magazine cut-outs to fool face-recognition software currently used in some of the country's cigarette vending machines into selling him smokes.

From July, Japan’s set to introduce tough regulations allowing prosecutions to be brought against vending-machine companies whose dispensers sell tobacco to someone under the country’s legal smoking age of 20.

As a result, numerous Japanese cigarette machines already feature facial verification software that aims to cut-down on sales of smokes to minors. One such system, developed by firm Fujitaka, uses a camera built into the machine to snap a picture of the buyer. Software then analyses the person’s face for age identifiers, such as wrinkles around the eyes and sagging skin.

However, a reporter from one Japanese-language newspaper recently tested one such machine in Osaka and found that the machine sold him cigarettes - based on its analysis of a 6in wide photo of the reporter's 50-year-old father.

The reporter also tried the same method on a machine in Kobe and, worryingly, found that it accepted a 3in-wide magazine photo of a 30-year-old female. A 1in-wide photo of a female in her 30s was rejected by the machine.

Fujitaka has admitted that, on occasion, its software could be fooled by photographs. But underage smokers beware, because the firm’s developing more advanced facial recognition software for its machines.

 

[Turiko]

Good idea, they need to do that here too, and install this technology in clubs. It would be a step forward to reining in the out-of-control youth of SA

 

[DJ...]

Good idea, they need to do that here too, and install this technology in clubs. It would be a step forward to reining in the out-of-control youth of SA

Smoking and clubs are the problem with our youth? If that is so then we have nothing to worry about.

 

[Turiko]

No I meant that w.r.t. alcohol. Alcohol is a far more serious problem at present...

 

[Moederloos]

Smoking and clubs are the problem with our youth? If that is so then we have nothing to worry about.

He said it would be a step forward.
It is part of the problem, maybe a small part - but a part nonetheless.
When you have 10 year old girls going into clubs to sell their bodies for beer, you have a problem.

 

[werner]

they should fit the machine with a printer..
if you show it a photo of an adult it will print out a picture of a packet of cigarettes!
haha

ok, how to work this...machine will say.."smile" then take a photo...then say "close your right eye" and take another photo....all chosen from a random list of actions...then decide if you are a human or not, and dispense your smokes.

 

[DJ...]

No I meant that w.r.t. alcohol. Alcohol is a far more serious problem at present...

He said it would be a step forward.
It is part of the problem, maybe a small part - but a part nonetheless.
When you have 10 year old girls going into clubs to sell their bodies for beer, you have a problem.

I own and dj at clubs and havent encountered this. The under-age drinking happens every now and then when they slip through, but it is not an issue that is degrading the fabric of our society. And to be honest, it is the shady clubs who couldnt afford/want to purchase this technology who would be causing the problems...

Sorry dudes, I just get a bit defensive about it...

 

[DavidJ]

It doesn't sound like that machine would be very reliable anyway if it looks for 'age markers' such as wrinkles, I'm sure there would be lots of false positives and negatives.

 

[DavidJ]

Smoking and clubs are the problem with our youth? If that is so then we have nothing to worry about.

Heh, yup ... this is ridiculous. Almost all of the people I know who used to smoke and go to clubs in their teens are now productive law-abiding adults.