ABSTRACT
Facial recognition technology is improving by leaps and bounds. Some commercial software can now tell the gender of a person in a photograph. Facial recognition algorithms made by Microsoft, IBM, and Face++ were more likely to misidentify the gender of black women than white men. Today, facial recognition software is being deployed by companies in various ways, including to help target product pitches based on social media profile pictures. The African and Nordic faces were scored according to a six-point labeling system used by dermatologists to classify skin types. To test the commercial systems, Ms. Buolamwini built a data set of 1,270 faces, using faces of lawmakers from countries with a high percentage of women in office.
