CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — A study conducted by MIT's media lab shows something shocking about facial recognition — the systems are better at identifying light-skinned males than darker-skinned females. <br /><br />MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini built a data set of 1,270 faces from different countries that included a large number of females in public office.<br /><br />The faces included three African nations with predominantly dark-skinned populations, and three Nordic countries with mainly light-skinned people.<br /><br />To see how well the systems are at identifying faces, three different facial recognition systems made by Microsoft, IBM, and Megvii of China were put into the trial. <br /><br />Each face was assigned with a rating for skin type based on the Fitzpatrick rating system, a six-point rating system which dermatologists use for classifying different shades of skin.<br /><br />The results showed the systems had an easy time with lighter-skinned men, only misidentifying the gender in about 1% of all photos, with about a 7% inaccuracy rate for lighter-skinned women. <br /><br />The systems struggled with darker-skinned men with 12% inaccuracy, while darker-skinned women had about a 35% inaccuracy rate.
