This is, if true, probably just a case of poor software testing caused by an over aggressive drive to market. Conplex
Software is relatively new to cameras, and the industry is likely still figuring out the demands behind releasing high quality global software. The early days of mobile phones had similar problems with software. You have to understand that these guys ate driven pwimarily by the hardware- to a lot of vendors software is something you slap in just beforeyour CNET reveiw. Same for phones in the past.

Sorry for the typos. written on a phone

Yeah, if they did any sort of rigorous testing, they wouldn't have had a "neutral" model. They would've tested on people of all ages, sizes, ethnicities, etc.

I've just gotten back from my holidays in Tokyo. I have a Nikon Coolpix camera and I was really amused when the same message appeared most times I took a picture of a statue of Buddha.

FWIW, Nikon (full name 株式会社ニコン or Kabushiki-gaisha Nikon) is a Japanese company, so yeah. I don't really think they are discriminating against Asians.

i can imagine this is harder to tune for asian faces, since the difference between blinking and non-blinking is much smaller.

For example: at least in the pic you show the eyes DO look blinking even to my human processor.

to recognize blinking they probably cut out the eyes and determine the relative amount of 'white' that can be seen. if it's below a certain margin for both eyes then the camera thinks the person is blinking.

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

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.

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.)

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?)

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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/

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

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.

https://plus.google.com/116727221167063581708/posts/8CfgVB5yc1q

lol