Google might scan your face and give you a $5 gift card for it

[Matrix]

 

 

 

In context: Google's upcoming Pixel 4 may be a few months away but apparently its employees are going out in public and randomly asking volunteers to have their faces scanned in return for a $5 gift card, with the motivation behind it reportedly being the development of Google's own version of Face ID for its next phones.

Yesterday we got to know more about the upcoming Pixel 4's design and now it seems more likely that the new cutout on the top right could be home to a face recognition sensor. As reported by ZDNet, Google employees are out in the wild asking the public to use a "phone in a very large case" in what could be a Pixel prototype learning its way around recognizing faces, like a human baby.

The Google employees are also giving out $5 gift cards, which in this encounter, could be spent at Amazon or Starbucks. Considering that "they have teams in many cities doing this," those gift cards may also be useful in other places. The objective of this activity though, is to collect data to "improve the next generation of facial recognition phone unlocking."

"I basically had to use selfie mode and move my face around to get different angles of my face," said George, a friend of Chris, who reported of the incident. George was then offered a $5 gift card in exchange for 5 minutes of interaction with the phone.

He also inquired with the team on whether they were the only ones doing this activity considering that they would need a whole lot of time and a big data set to achieve their goal. George, who resides in New York, was then told by the employees that they have many teams in other cities doing the same.

There was also a waiver which a volunteer needed to sign before engaging with the face scanning prototype/device which George admits he didn't go fully through. "Truthfully, I didn't read the full waiver thing," he says.

Upon Chris questioning his friend whether he knows of what Google will do with his information, George said that he assumes that the company will "use the data to train a neural network to be able to recognize what a face is...Then you train your own phone on what your specific face looks like. And that's what gets used to unlock your phone, Face ID-style, but more accurately."

When Chris asked his friend regarding privacy concerns, he said that the company already has his whole life on their servers and practically it isn't possible for him to remove Google from his life. "I don't really care about data privacy because I think it's all an illusion anyway."

It's interesting to see how this encounter also reflects the general behavior of a majority of people when it comes to privacy. Although user data has long been a gold mine for companies, would it be more acceptable if they started paying their users in exchange for it?

 

 VIEW: Original Article.

[dMog]

GOOGLE CAN BITE ME

[xpkRAKE]

This is the kind of thing that may at first seem an inocuous feature on a phone

 

but then winds up as mass surveillance tech - in google's greasy paws as well....no thanks.

[Infinite_Vision]

No Thank you.  But there will be a lot of idiots that will fall for it. 😩  When they get a picture of you, they will probably put that picture next to the data that they have gather about who you are.  What's to say that they are not going to sell your data like FB.  So they have your picture, your browsing history, your email, your YouTube account, the street where you live with their maps, etc.  What's next your DNA?  Look up 23andMe which is run by the sister of the CEO of YouTube.  Beginning of last year, they paid a ton of YouTube influencers to promote that DNA testing stuff.  I almost did it last year but decided against after reading about it from national newspapers.  When you do the test, they own your DNA result and it is kept at their database.  If I want to get it done and I'm paying for it, that result should be kept private or thrown away after I have receive those results.  They want it all.  So they can know what type of diseases you have so they can sell you the drugs.   At least the European got some privacy laws whereas the US does not.   

[steven36]

As Google works on a version of Face ID for its next Pixel phone, its employees are stopping people in public places and enticing them with a $5 gift card.

 

In search of Face ID perfection?

 

 

My engineer friend George is taking a break to work on himself.

 

Personally, I've always liked him the way he is, but he insists that he could and should be better.

 

 

Did I mention he's an engineer?

 

So he spends his time taking esoteric self-help classes and sitting around New York, watching his fellow humans help themselves to the joys of summer life.

 

Occasionally, people come up to him and chat. Last week, one of those people wanted to buy his face.

 

"I was sitting in the park on a sunny day, enjoying the weather and I see a few guys walking around approaching people with phones like they're taking a survey," he told me.

 

Market researchers, you might think. Or perhaps Scientologists.

 

 

Well, the next best thing, it appears.

 

George explained: "Eventually one of them works his way over to me and says something to the effect of 'Hi, I work for Google and we're collecting data to improve the next generation of facial recognition phone unlocking.'" 

 

Google collecting data? This is how they're doing it now? Perhaps it's an attempt at the personal touch, for a change.

 

George told me the Googlologists handed him a phone in a very large case. It was hard, he said, to see whether inside was a new Pixel prototype or something older.

 

"I basically had to use selfie mode and move my face around to get different angles of my face," he said.

 

"George," I worried. "They're taking your face and making it theirs. Did they at least pay you for it?"

 

"He offered me a $5 gift card to Amazon or Starbucks in exchange for 5 minutes of me interacting with the phone," he admitted.

 

"You sold your face for $5?" I asked.

 

"Yeah, well I wanted to see what they'd ask me to do."

 

Engineers, they just can't help themselves, can they? They have to see what happens.

 

George worried whether these Google types really knew what they were doing: "I asked if he was the only team collecting the data because they would need an insane amount of data to do what they wanted to. Insane in the sense that one team of people could do this for years and still not have enough. He mentioned that they have teams in many cities doing this."

 

And then it struck me. "George, did you sign your rights to your face away?"

 

He admitted he had. He admitted more than that: "Truthfully, I didn't read the full waiver thing."

 

"So Google bought your face for five bucks and you don't know what they're going to do with it?" I asked.

 

"I assume they'll use the data to train a neural network to be able to recognize what a face is," he replied. "Then you train your own phone on what your specific face looks like. And that's what gets used to unlock your phone, Face ID-style, but more accurately."

 

"George, I was thinking about the privacy thing. I don't know if you've heard, but it's quite big these days. Do you really know what they'll do with your face?"

 

George opted for magical realism. He said: "Google basically has my whole life on their servers already. And removing Google from my life just isn't going to happen from a practical point of view. I don't really care about data privacy because I think it's all an illusion anyway."

 

Naturally, I asked Google what it would be doing with George's face, but the company didn't immediately respond.

 

George isn't exactly wrong with how many humans have come to regard privacy. Perhaps deep inside they know that the engineers will always win.

 

After all, the engineers have exercised their principles of rampant data collection, and when those principles butted up against more basic human principles like privacy, they enticed the humans with some asinine inducement and took all their data.

 

We didn't feel a thing, did we?

 

 

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