Facial recognition technology struggles to see past gender binary

Facial recognition remains highly controversial but is gaining in use by police and immigration services. — AFP

Facial recognition technology is failing to recognise transgender people new research has shown, raising concerns about discrimination as the use of the software becomes increasingly prevalent.

Researchers at the US University of Colorado Boulder tested facial recognition systems from tech giants IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and Clarifai on photographs of trans men and found they were misidentified as women 38% of the time.