Alibaba To 'Face' The Future

The CeBIT conference -- held in Hannover, Germany this week -- saw the founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA - Analyst Report), Jack Ma, present a prototype of a payment system that makes use of facial recognition for security.

The service known as "Smile to Pay" will let users make mobile payments by simply scanning their face.

After the conference, Ma refused to answer any follow-up questions for the new payment system. As a result, its official release date remains vague. However, In Recode’s opinion Ma would like to make this beta project available to the public by 2017. CNBC reported that "Smile to Pay" will be released first in China.

During the unveiling of this new payment system, Ma said that online payments were a headache as people tend to forget their passwords and worry about security. He then went on to unveil the new system stating that this is how people will buy things online in the future.

Is Facial Recognition Technology the Future?

Facial recognition technology has been around for quite sometime now. However, its accuracy remains doubtful. As Lee Munson of Naked Securities noted, even humans can only surely identify a subject from a photograph 97.53% of the time. Some companies want to develop software that can beat that level of accuracy.

Advances made in the technology that allowed recognition of emotional states with an accuracy level ranging between 76.9% and 96.9%, (depending upon the complexity of the emotion) were revealed by a study conducted in the Ohio State University last year.

The ability to recognize faces has been a benchmark for artificial intelligence for a long time now. Developments like Facebook's (FB - Analyst Report) "DeepFace" technology throws light on the power of today's facial recognition tools and what these mean for the future.

A patent published by Apple (AAPL - Analyst Report) in March last year shows how the Tim Cook-led company explored the option of using facial recognition as a security measure for unlocking its devices. Yes, unlocking the iPhone could one day be as simple as clicking a quick selfie.

Google (GOOGL - Analyst Report) is not far behind. It has also invested quite a bit in this field. However, much of its interest stems from the possibilities offered by image search. Google hopes to find more ways to sort the huge number of photos that exist online.

In the End

While this technology may seem great right now, the future is less clear. As the underlying technology advances, new uses will be found. This technology also has the potential to breach security.

Being aware of facial recognition and how it is used by companies holds the key to help us ‘face’ the future. For now, all we can do is look at each use of facial recognition as it comes along.