Comments on: Nikon Camera Says Asians: People Are Always Blinking

By: RickS

RickS — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:36:37 +0000

Applying a human characteristic to an electronic machine, have we become that brain dead that we become so offended when we have to answer a machines request of how to process something we just did. That we can’t just say no and take more pictures. No, we have to turn it into a racial thing and make a Global Statement claiming racism by a camera manufacturer that creates a wide variety of optical equipment that benefits all mankind, it boggles the mind. I think only a racist could find this racist and isn’t serious enough for me to give up my NIKON F4s over because it captures every thing, this includes color, acurately. This camera would probably ask the same thing if I took one of a younger brother of mine, because he was always being asked if his eyes were open, during the pictures and looking at the prints. I think if the camera asked ‘there was an ugly person in the picture or did you get everybodys good side, do you want to save anyway’ then we might have a problem. Until then use the other option of turning it off. Here’s a project for you see if it asks that when people are laughing so hard they close their eyes or when someone is sleeping. Oh and here is another one get a friggin life.

By: user testing fail - usability fail.

user testing fail - usability fail. — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:02:21 +0000

[...] or their engineers would’ve caught it testing on themselves. Since this kind of problem isn’t new in facial recognition software, lack of full user testing that takes into consideration the full [...]

By: HP Software Doesn’t See Black People » Sociological Images

HP Software Doesn’t See Black People » Sociological Images — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:02:05 +0000

[...] seen this kind of thing before with a Nikon camera that seemed to think that Asian people were always blinking (though there was [...]

By: Sociological Images » What We’ve Been Up To Behind Your Back (June 2009)

Sociological Images » What We’ve Been Up To Behind Your Back (June 2009) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:09:38 +0000

[...] Racialicious had an interesting post about Microsoft’s Natal game initially having trouble recognizing people with “dark skin,” which we added to our post about Nikon’s blink-recognition software problems. [...]

By: simono

simono — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:20:38 +0000

@sycorax: camers and iPhoto = similar software, same problem

By: Sycorax

Sycorax — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:25:18 +0000

It’s not just cameras that have trouble with human features; there’s a Flickr pool of “Things iPhoto Thinks Are Faces” here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/977532@N24/pool/

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:30:48 +0000

Okay, speaking from the programming side of things, computers are just really, really bad at interacting with physical reality outside of all but the narrowest, most tightly controlled situations. Pop culture likes to describe brains as being “like computers.” They are not. Not in the least. Generally speaking, the brain is good at doing what it evolved to do, interacting with physical reality and adapting to new stimuli. Computers are good at doing what they were originally designed to do, large mathematical calculations performed quickly and with a high degree of accuracy. Getting a computer to do anything else requires herculean efforts that mainly result in novel ways to reduce some activity to a series of mathematical calculations. Now this doesn’t work well when faced with messy reality. That’s why our cars still can’t drive themselves, that’s why our computers still sound like robots, and that’s why that camera can’t tell when people’s eyes are shut or when they’re open. We just don’t have good formulas for that yet.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:44:17 +0000

I just got back from vacation with a friend who has this camera (we are three white women) and after every photo, it asked us, “Did someone blink?” It became a running joke because the sensor asked this question whether or not there was a person (or blinking person) in the shot. We found a way to turn this application off because it was so distracting. I’m curious as to whether you’ll discover anything here in relation to race.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:06:17 +0000

It may not be germane to the post, but I’m reminded of a story my ex- told about a decade ago of a vocal-prompt her grandfather’s new camera would offer. I tried to find a corroborating reference online, but can only come up with the following phrase repeated verbatim on different sites:

“Too crowdy. Use frash.” — Jen’s grandfather’s very expensive talking Japanese camera on a typical overcast Seattle day.

By: DaniFae

DaniFae — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:53:32 +0000

Elena’s posts kind of confirmed what I was thinking. The AI just isn’t that good. Judging from the picture submitted the camera would ask that of just about anyone who was smiling or laughing, barring someone with extremely large/wide eyes.

Though, personally, I’d have to see a series of pictures, taken of different people, before saying the camera’s programing was racist. (One picture is not a good sample.)

By: Elena

Elena — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:05:30 +0000

No, it was bought in Europe. But it also displays the same message when my Caucasian relatives are looking downward or sideways, and sometimes in images where no humans are present. Image recognition AI software is just not ready for prime time yet.

By: Umlud

Umlud — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:17:27 +0000

Not to get all meta (again) on a post: but Asia is a continent containing several billion people of widely varying (such as it is within a single species) facial features. If by “Asian features” you meant East-Asian (i.e., Japanese, Korean, east-China Chinese) then why not say so? Remember, all peoples originating from Turkey to Japan are all “Asian”, and I’m assuming that you didn’t mean to imply that this particular programming fault affected all those billions of “Asian” eyes, even those that don’t have “Asian features”.

I also agree with Elena: Nikon – a Japanese company – is unlikely singling out those with “Asian features”. The point that I was wondering when reading the article was whether Nikon uses a different facial-recognition computer model in their Japanese-market cameras, and (if so) why they chose to use a different one in the above example. Anyone know the answer to this question? (Elena – was the camera you used from the US?)

By: T B

T B — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:03:42 +0000

There are more comments here — where there are links to various other sites where comments have been posted -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jozjozjoz/3529106844/

(Finding any substantial analysis will be a challenge, it seems, however.)

By: Dubi

Dubi — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:41:50 +0000

As Elena noted, this is a Japanese company. Rather than talk about the supposed “neutral” model (i.e.: why those %@%^%$% racists!), I think this is actually one of those interesting cases of the cultural fascination the Japanese have with Americans (or, actually, people of European origins). This fascination rivals any incident of exotization of Asians you can find in Western cultures. It actually gives us a good opportunity to get a feel of how they react to our feeble attempts at understanding their culture(s), as it so often turns out quite comical.
At any rate, this isn’t about racism against Asians, but merely a misrepresentation of the West as ethnically homogeneous.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:22:40 +0000

This may be exacerbated by the natural squinting that occurs during some smiles.