While most of us are familiar with face recognition on smart phones, the biometric is now being used at physical casinos. Of course, there have been major drawbacks with the tech on our phones. In fact, ways to trick it made headlines last year. So, how can casinos avoid false matches and incorrect identification? Through artificial intelligence (AI) and some neat tricks.
Still, there’s a heated debate going on about using this technology for surveillance. Most casinos, at this point, use it to prevent cheating and theft. Whereas, in New Zealand and Japan, it’s used to help problem gamblers stay out of gambling venues. For most civil liberties advocates, the use of the face recognition AI seems a little more nefarious.
Right now, the tech is being tested, which is what’s riling up cynics. Critics are concerned that the tests will be used for identifying women and minorities, as well as how the database will be gathered. If the AI is given access to the social security database, for example, how will regular people be affected?
What Face Recognition Does
At G2E in 2018, the uses of face recognition AI were demonstrated by Remark Holdings CEO, Shing Tao. According to Tao, the AI won’t just match faces, but note clothing, gender and age. Should security look for the person later on, they’ll have a full description to work on. What’s more, it could be used to track car models and number plates. More so, it’ll probably work in any weather conditions. Which begs the question, how far could this go?
In terms of privacy, civil liberties are being questioned. Advocates are especially concerned that face recognition could be used to profile certain groups and invade personal privacy. Depending on the database of images and profiles, this could make airports and other places risky. Of course, just using it for casino surveillance presents its own problems.
However, the benefits of the system have already been shown in Australia. The Sydney Star casino recently caught one of their dealers stealing a chip. In this case, the dealer had taken a chip worth $3633 and hidden it in his sock. The cameras and biometrics picked up on the theft almost immediately. So, maybe AI biometrics aren’t so bad after all. They’ll just need to be maintained and set up properly to avoid profiling unfairly.
