Jeff John Roberts for Fortune:
Masks and simple photographs are enough to fool some facial recognition technology, highlighting a major shortcoming in what is billed as a more effective security tool.
The test, by artificial intelligence company Kneron, involved visiting public locations and tricking facial recognition terminals into allowing payment or access… the Kneron team used high quality 3-D masks to deceive AliPay and WeChat payment systems in order to make purchases.
More alarming were the tests deployed at transportation hubs. At the self-boarding terminal in Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands’ largest airport, the Kneron team tricked the sensor with just a photo on a phone screen. The team also says it was able to gain access in this way to rail stations in China where commuters use facial recognition to pay their fare and board trains.
The transportation experiments raise concerns about terrorism at a time when security agencies are exploring facial recognition as a means of saving money and improving efficiency…
Kneron also noted that its experiments could not fool some facial recognition applications, notably Apple’s iPhone X.
MacDailyNews Take: iPhone X, of course, was Apple’s first generation of Face ID, which has since been even further improved in subsequent iPhones.