By Paresh Dave
– Facial recognition returned to the latest Google Pixel phones on Thursday after a brief hiatus due to cost and performance challenges, according to three former employees at the Alphabet Inc unit with knowledge of the effort.
The new Pixel 7’s feature isn’t as good as Apple Inc’s Face ID unlocking mechanism, as it can struggle in low light and is more vulnerable to being faked. In addition, Google has said that it is not secure enough to allow signing in to apps or making payments.
The return comes after Google became stricter about releasing products with facial recognition, in part because of questions about its performance on darker skin. The company took time to review its approach to training and testing facial recognition since the previous Pixel with the capability launching in 2019, one of the sources said.
Google declined to comment on several specific questions about its history with face unlock. Overall, he said, “Thanks to advanced machine learning models for facial recognition, Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro include Face Unlock, but we do it a little differently.” He added: “We achieve good facial accuracy performance with the front-facing camera.”
Google’s pursuit of face unlock for Android smartphones stretches back at least a decade, but came under increased pressure when Apple launched Face ID in September 2017, the sources said.
Until that point, Google struggled to come up with a system that worked quickly and was impervious to spoofing, or the use of hyper-realistic photos or outfits to trick someone else’s phone into unlocking, one of the sources said. . Engineers toyed with requiring a smile or blink, demonstrating a person’s “aliveness,” to combat spoofing, but it was awkward and slow, the source said.
Another source noted that after the arrival of Apple’s Face ID, which uses an infrared camera and depth sensor called TrueDepth to map a face, Google executives signed off on comparable technology. Google’s Pixel 4, launched in 2019, called its infrared depth-sensing setup uDepth.
It worked well, even in dark conditions, with a 1 in 50,000 chance of unlocking a phone for an unauthorized face, according to Google.
But the equipment was expensive. And while Apple sells 240 million iPhones a year, Google has reached a few million, preventing it from buying parts with Apple’s volume discounts.
Google dropped uDepth on the Pixel 5 in 2020 due to costs, the sources said.
Face masking due to the pandemic gave Google reason to exclude the feature from last year’s Pixel 6 and additional research time, two sources said.
Face unlock on the new phones is based on a typical front-facing camera. But unlike the previous system, it can’t securely unlock apps and payments because Google says the chances of forgery, such as keeping a user’s photo, is greater than 20%, above the 7% threshold that requires to be considered more “secure”.
Low light and sunglasses can also cause problems, Google says, noting that fingerprint unlocking remains an option.