Philip K. Dick science-fiction novels have seemed to be coming to life for the past 30 years now – with each technological breakthrough. And today, it feels like we’re entering into “Minority Report”. Not with pre-cogs solving true crime cases quite yet.
But with Facebook‘s recent announcement of their facial recognition software advances, it’s hard not to recall the scene where Tom Cruise gets his stolen eyes scanned at the GAP and khaki pants are recommended for him. Oh yes future, we’re there. It’s just not being used quite like that, yet.
But now Facebook is using this same kind of facial recognition technology to speed up the way you tag your friends within your photo uploads. No more typing in your friend’s name 100 times to chronicle his time at your party. You can simply group the photos you want to auto-tag and click “save now”. Now, this software isn’t quite a breakthrough. It’s been around for a while. But now it’s a part of the largest social network on the planet. And how hard would it be to create a Facebook app that utilizes this database, scans walk-in customers and recommends new khaki pants for them based on “likes” and past e-commerce transactions?