How can you use generative AI to improve facial recognition accuracy?
Facial recognition is a powerful technology that can identify and verify people based on their facial features. However, it also faces some challenges, such as low-quality images, occlusions, variations in pose, expression, and lighting, and ethical concerns. How can you use generative AI to improve facial recognition accuracy? Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that can create new data from existing data, such as images, videos, text, or audio. In this article, you will learn how generative AI can help you overcome some of the limitations of facial recognition and enhance its performance.
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Amit MalhotraManaging Director @ Accenture | Commercial Banking Lead | Digital Transformations | Innovation
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Lisa BouariEY Partner | Oceania AI Leader | AI & Data | Generative AI strategy and delivery.
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Aruna PattamLinkedIn Top Voice AI | Head, Generative AI | Thought Leader | Speaker | Master Data Scientist | MBA | Australia's…
One of the main applications of generative AI for facial recognition is data augmentation. Data augmentation is the process of increasing the size and diversity of your training data by applying transformations, such as cropping, flipping, rotating, scaling, or adding noise. This can help you reduce overfitting, improve generalization, and handle imbalanced classes. However, traditional data augmentation methods may not be enough to capture the complex variations of human faces. Generative AI can help you create more realistic and diverse synthetic faces that can enrich your training data and improve your facial recognition model.
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Generative AI can also be used to predict/generate some more images of the person such as with beard, with goggles/glasses etc. this can improve the accuracy and facial recognition can work in unexpected scenarios.
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When I built facial recognition software for ADP (facial authentication to clock in / out employees), many employers used these devices in outdoor settings. Exterior lighting conditions and shadows are important factors that can impact facial recognition algorithms and Gen AI can help generate conditions for these outdoor conditions. In the past, we’d get complaints where employees would clock in during the morning hours when the sun was bright but issues would arise in the afternoon when a shadow would be cast and employees would unable to clock out. Gen AI can help create better algorithms to ensure a smooth experience for employees and ensure they’re able to stay compliant with their time keeping.
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💡We can utilize GANs to generate diverse facial images. GANs, through their generator and discriminator components, can create new, realistic facial images that expand the dataset and introduce additional variability and complexity. 💡For instance, a facial recognition system trained on well-lit images might struggle with recognizing faces in dim lighting. GANs can generate diverse images, simulating various lighting conditions, thereby training the model to recognize faces even in suboptimal lighting.
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One of the use case in my view would be Generative AI to be used to create adversarial examples, which are synthetic facial images that are designed to fool facial recognition models. By training facial recognition models on adversarial examples, researchers can make them more robust to attack.
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Generative AI can generate face images for training sets: - Faces with various Occlusion - Age variance of younger times and older - Faces images in low light condition - Faces of twins All above will increase accuracy of algorithm. Generative Ai can also provide help in reducing processing requirement.
Another application of generative AI for facial recognition is face synthesis. Face synthesis is the process of generating new faces that do not exist in the real world, but look realistic and natural. This can help you create synthetic datasets for testing and evaluation, anonymize sensitive data, or generate novel faces for entertainment or research purposes. Generative AI can help you create high-quality and high-resolution synthetic faces that can preserve the identity, expression, pose, and attributes of the original faces. Some of the generative AI techniques that can achieve face synthesis are generative adversarial networks (GANs), variational autoencoders (VAEs), and style transfer.
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Synthetic faces also help anonymize and expand limited real-world datasets. Models avoid overfitting to small data. Generating high-quality synthetic faces with AI provides more training data. This boosts model accuracy on recognizing real faces. Companies should use face synthesis carefully to avoid data bias. It generates new faces that don't exist in the real world. But they look impressively realistic and natural. This synthetic data augments training datasets for facial recognition models. It exposes them to more facial diversity, it's a powerful tool for improving facial analysis.
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Face synthesis is another application of generative AI for facial recognition. One significant use of face synthesis is in creating synthetic datasets for testing and evaluation. By generating diverse faces, researchers can train facial recognition systems on a wide range of images and assess their performance accurately. This helps to ensure the robustness and reliability of such systems. Overall, face synthesis is a powerful application of generative AI in facial recognition. It offers a range of practical uses, including dataset creation, anonymization, entertainment, and research purposes. By leveraging techniques such as GANs, VAEs, high-quality synthetic faces can be generated, preserving the characteristics of the original faces.
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Face synthesis is a useful tool to synthetically increase the number of identities in the FR datasets and diversity. However, it is important to analyse how these algorithms are trained & the quality of images (visual & non-visual) they produce. Although, the generated data can be visually appealing, they do not guarantee bias free outputs. The shared latent space & generation function and the learned negative biases of the generative models can traverse to the FR algorithms when trained with this seemingly good looking data. For instance, although images from two synthetic identities could look different, they can have shared features which can degrade the FR training. So, although the potential is limitless, we need to tread with caution.
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I have not extensively worked on Gen AI, my 2cents are based on my academic pursuit. Controlled Synthesis: StyleGAN allows specific face attribute control. Forgery Detection: Train models to spot "deepfakes". Performance Tests: Gauge facial recognition robustness. Ethical Use: Ensure synthesized faces aren't misused. Interactive Apps: Modify facial attributes for user fun. Film & Games: Aid character face creation. In my opinion; Synthetic faces, if used responsibly, offer expansive applications across sectors.
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The development of face synthesis has made significant strides with the advent of Generative AI. Facial landmark detection, expression transfer, and modelling diversity has revolutionized the art and science of face synthesis. Ability to generate faces with features, expressions, and ethnicities has opened so many novel opportunities in the fields of gaming, virtual reality, film production, and facial animation. Responsible usage and ethical considerations should be paid attention to while using Generative AI for face synthesis to ensure privacy, consent and cultural sensitivity for people involved.
A third application of generative AI for facial recognition is face editing. Face editing is the process of modifying existing faces by changing or adding features, such as age, gender, hair, glasses, or emotions. This can help you enhance or correct images, create face morphing or swapping effects, or generate new facial expressions or identities. Generative AI can help you perform face editing in a fast and flexible way, without losing the quality or realism of the original faces. Some of the generative AI techniques that can enable face editing are conditional GANs, image-to-image translation, and facial landmark manipulation.
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💡Using stable diffusion is also an efficient method for face editing. It means slowly changing facial features while keeping the new face looking real and stable. Imagine we want to create pictures of a person at different ages for a facial recognition system. Stable diffusion can gently change features like wrinkles or hair color to make the person look older or younger while keeping the face looking real and natural. This helps the system recognize the person at any age, making sure the created faces are believable and consistent in their changes.
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With conditional GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), face editing can be achieved by conditioning the generator on specific attributes like age, gender, or emotion. The generator then tries to generate a face that matches the desired attributes, while the discriminator tries to determine if the generated face is real or fake. This adversarial training improves the realistic appearance of the generated faces. Image-to-image translation models can also be used for face editing. These models learn to translate an input image with certain attributes to an output image with desired attributes. For example, an input image of a person with glasses can be translated into an output image of the same person without glasses.
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Advanced and high quality facial editing along with retouching powered by Generative AI can create any look, facial expressions, ethnicity or age as suited for a particular client use case or a marketing campaign. A good example of such a technology is AI Generative Fill in the Photoshop that can edit faces in the picture within a few minutes just by a few clicks. Facet.ai is another such application.
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This stands out as particularly remarkable, enabling a multitude of applications and enhancements in facial imagery. Examples include facial beautification, age progression and regression, makeup simulation, and adjustments to facial attributes. However, when applied to social media photos, it raises concerns about the authenticity and integrity of our online personas. The question arises: will our digital representations continue to reflect reality?
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The use of Generative AI for face editing could serve to create 'controlled conditions' for A/B testing in market research or in advertising campaigns. You could measure consumer reactions to the same individual expressing different emotions or wearing different attire, thereby isolating and studying individual variables in a way that was not possible before.
A fourth application of generative AI for facial recognition is face verification. Face verification is the process of confirming whether two faces belong to the same person or not. This can help you authenticate users, prevent fraud, or secure access. However, face verification can be challenging when the faces have different poses, expressions, or lighting conditions. Generative AI can help you perform face verification more accurately by generating face embeddings, which are numerical representations of the facial features that capture the identity of the person. Some of the generative AI techniques that can produce face embeddings are deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), siamese networks, and triplet loss.
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Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are commonly used in face verification. They are trained on large datasets of labeled faces to learn features that distinguish between different individuals. Siamese networks are another approach for face verification. They consist of two identical CNNs that share weights. Each CNN takes in an input face image and generates a feature vector. The similarity between the two feature vectors can then be measured to determine if the faces belong to the same person. Triplet loss is a loss function used in training siamese networks. It uses three samples: an anchor image, a positive image of the same person as the anchor, and a negative image of a different person.
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The GAN consists of two neural networks: a generator network that creates new faces and a discriminator network that distinguishes between real and fake faces. The generator network learns to create realistic face images by receiving feedback from the discriminator network on how well its generated faces match the real faces in the dataset. Once the generator network has learned to create realistic faces, it can be used to generate synthetic face images for face verification. These synthetic face images can be used to augment the training data for face verification algorithms, making them more robust to variations in lighting, pose, and expression.
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CNNs have traditionally been used for face verification. However, Vision Transformers (ViTs) have the potential to enhance performance due to their ability to capture long-range dependencies and relationships between patches. This capability might train the model to recognize especially important facial features more effectively.
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After detecting and encoding the faces in the images, the next step is to compare the encoded features and verify if they belong to the same person or not. This can be done by calculating the distance or similarity between the feature vectors, and setting a threshold to decide if they match or not. For example, a generative AI model can use a siamese network, which consists of two identical sub-networks that share the same weights and parameters, to learn how to compare the encoded features of two faces. The siamese network can output a score that indicates how similar or dissimilar the faces are, and then compare it with the threshold to verify the identity. This way, the generative AI model can improve the face verification accuracy.
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In the field of People Analytics, the synergy of generative AI and facial recognition empowers organizations to extract valuable insights. Analyzing facial expressions and emotions can provide deeper employee engagement and sentiment analysis. This data can be utilized for HR decision-making, enhancing workplace well-being, and giving better communication.
A fifth application of generative AI for facial recognition is face recognition. Face recognition is the process of identifying or labeling a person based on their face. This can help you perform tasks such as face detection, face alignment, face clustering, or face recognition. However, face recognition can be affected by factors such as large-scale datasets, low-frequency classes, or cross-domain scenarios. Generative AI can help you improve face recognition by generating face prototypes, which are average or representative faces of each class that can reduce the intra-class variance and increase the inter-class distance. Some of the generative AI techniques that can construct face prototypes are prototypical networks, center loss, and prototype loss.
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Techniques like prototypical networks and center loss create optimized prototype faces tailored for recognition accuracy. It can generate representative prototype faces for each person. This reduces variation between different photos of the same person. The prototypes act as facial anchors that boost cohesiveness within classes and separability between classes. The prototypes maximize differences between individuals while minimizing differences of the same individual. This improves discrimination. Generative AI can handle issues like large datasets and new domains by creating prototypes adapted to new data. Generative AI can handle issues like large datasets and new domains by creating prototypes adapted to new data.
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Generative AI techniques can improve face recognition by creating prototype faces that are average or representative faces of each class. This helps reduce intra-class variance (variations within one class) and increases inter-class distance (differences between different classes). To do this, we use generative artificial intelligence methods that can create prototypes of faces: - Prototypical networks. - Loss of center. - Loss of the prototype. These generative AI techniques facilitate the creation of face prototypes, which can improve facial recognition accuracy by reducing the influence of factors such as large-scale datasets, low-frequency classes, and cross-domain scenarios.
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My 2 cents here Data Imbalance Mitigation: Generative AI synthesizes images for underrepresented classes, addressing imbalance, and promoting model fairness. Noise/Occlusion Handling: Generates clear samples for training models, improving recognition in non-ideal conditions. Temporal Consistency: Utilizes sequence generation models like LSTMs for stable recognition in dynamic environments. Multimodal Integration: Facilitates fusion of facial data with other modalities, enriching recognition. Ethical/Regulatory Compliance: Stresses the importance of adhering to ethical guidelines and regulations to ensure privacy.
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'Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.' Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park. Generative AI could be used if you remove the bias from the image pool and reduce the shallowness of the images that the AI responds to. If it takes compiles snapshots from a movie it could help.
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Generative AI can improve face recognition accuracy by creating synthetic faces that augment the existing database and increase its diversity and coverage. For example, a generative AI model can produce realistic variations of a face by changing its pose, expression, lighting, age, gender, ethnicity. These synthetic faces can then be used to train or fine-tune a face recognition model, making it more robust and adaptable to different scenarios and conditions. Alternatively, a generative AI model can also enhance the quality and resolution of low-quality or blurry faces in an image, making them easier to recognize and match.
A sixth application of generative AI for facial recognition is face restoration. Face restoration is the process of repairing or enhancing damaged or degraded faces, such as blurry, noisy, or distorted faces. This can help you improve the quality and usability of your images, recover missing or corrupted information, or remove unwanted artifacts. Generative AI can help you perform face restoration by generating clear and sharp faces that can restore the details and textures of the original faces. Some of the generative AI techniques that can achieve face restoration are super-resolution, denoising, inpainting, or deblurring.
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Privacy and security are two areas where I think Generative AI could ‘improve facial recognition’ (or the mis-use of it)! Facial recognition outside border security intentions can be considered invasive - and in some regions, new AI laws prohibit the use of it for public screening completely…. Advanced anonymisation using Gen AI makes it possible to protect identities in both images and video. Malicious actors out to misuse facial recognition technology for intrusive purposes, could be stopped in their tracks by using these techniques. I like the idea of using technology to achieve a balance between technological innovation and safeguarding people and their privacy. That’s how we could ‘improve facial recognition’ (by bad humans)!
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It is important to consider Bias and Ethics when using Generative AI. Bias: It is important to be aware of the potential for bias in generative AI models. For example, a model that is trained on a dataset of predominantly white faces may perform worse at recognizing faces of other races. It is important to use diverse training datasets and to carefully evaluate the performance of generative AI models on different groups of people. Ethics: It is important to use generative AI responsibly and ethically. For example, it is important to obtain consent from individuals before using their images to train generative AI models. It is also important to use generative AI models in a way that does not harm or exploit individuals.
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Generative AI can create new, high-quality synthetic images allowing facial recognition models to train on more complete data. This enhances performance in recognizing faces in challenging real-world conditions. Generative AI can create synthetic training data for facial recognition systems. It can generate new facial images with variations in pose, lighting, expression, age, gender and other attributes. This expanded training data exposes the facial recognition model to more scenarios. It helps improve accuracy on real-world images with poor lighting or angles. Generative AI can also alter existing facial datasets to expand diversity. This reduces bias and increases inclusion of underrepresented groups.
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Facial recognition tech is advancing rapidly, with companies like Facebook and Clearview AI developing prototypes. Clearview AI has offered its system to U.S. police departments for identifying suspects, raising ethical concerns. Journalists investigating these companies face challenges, and are often blacklisted to avoid scrutiny. As we stand on the cusp of this technological revolution, we must ask ourselves tough questions. Who owns our facial data? How will it be used or misused? Are we ready to trade privacy for convenience or security? As thought leaders, policymakers, and citizens, it's imperative that we engage in this dialogue now, before our faces become just another data point in a global database.
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💡The rise of deepfake technology has introduced a new level of complexity to ethical concerns. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos or images that convincingly superimpose one person's face onto another's. Imagine someone makes a deepfake video of a famous person saying things they never did. It looks so real that people believe it. This can cause confusion and problems, like spreading false information, and it raises big ethical and safety questions.
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