Google Glass may Not Allow Face Recognition Apps

Face-recognition apps won't be allowed on Google Glass anytime soon, says Google.

The company announced in a Google Plus post that it wouldn't add facial recognition features to its products without having strong privacy protections in place, reports MySlate.

Last month a congressional committee on privacy wrote Google an open letter explicitly asking whether Glass would have "facial recognition capabilities."

The controversy came to a head last week, when the San Francisco startup Lambda Labs announced that it would offer a facial-recognition programming interface for app developers working on Glass.

Lambda Labs' Stephen Balaban said at the time that he didn't see anything in the Google Glass terms of service that would prohibit using the device to recognize people's faces in photos or videos.

In addition to the announcement, Google has updated its app-developer policies for Glass to include the following clause which says not to use the camera or microphone to cross-reference and immediately present personal information identifying anyone other than the user, including use cases such as facial recognition and voice print. Applications that do this will not be approved at this time, it added.

Source: ANI