Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:
Face ID is easily the most hot-button topic to come out of Apple’s iPhone event this week, notch be damned. As people have parsed just how serious Apple is about it, questions have rightly begun to be raised about its effectiveness, security and creation.
To get some answers, I hopped on the phone with Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi. We went through a bunch of the common concerns in rapid-fire fashion, and I’ve also been asking around and listening to Apple folks who have been using the feature over long periods. Hopefully we can clear up some of the FUD about it.
And:
“Phil mentioned that we’d gathered a billion images and that we’d done data gathering around the globe to make sure that we had broad geographic and ethnic data sets. Both for testing and validation for great recognition rates,” says Federighi. “That wasn’t just something you could go pull off the internet.”
Especially given that the data needed to include a high-fidelity depth map of facial data. So, says Federighi, Apple went out and got consent from subjects to provide scans that were “quite exhaustive.” Those scans were taken from many angles and contain a lot of detail that was then used to train the Face ID system.
Imagine the process of deciding on a representative group of faces. A daunting problem.
“We do not gather customer data when you enroll in Face ID, it stays on your device, we do not send it to the cloud for training data,” he notes.
And, these tidbits on when Face ID yields to demand a passcode:
- If you haven’t used Face ID in 48 hours, or if you’ve just rebooted, it will ask for a passcode.
- If there are 5 failed attempts to Face ID, it will default back to passcode. (Federighi has confirmed that this is what happened in the demo onstage when he was asked for a passcode — it tried to read the people setting the phones up on the podium.)
- Developers do not have access to raw sensor data from the Face ID array. Instead, they’re given a depth map they can use for applications like the Snap face filters shown onstage. This can also be used in ARKit applications.
- You’ll also get a passcode request if you haven’t unlocked the phone using a passcode or at all in 6.5 days and if Face ID hasn’t unlocked it in 4 hours.
Great questions. Nice job, Matthew.
Very surprising to me how much trepidation there is about Face ID. It looks like a big win to me.
I’m sure within days of arrival somebody will have figured out how to spoof it, and we’ll all see click-baity headlines of doom. But it won’t matter. It will work perfectly, with excellent security, for the vast majority of people.
Mostly because people are generally clueless.
I saw comments elsewhere about how having the screen lock when 5 people look at your screen as being a potential problem.
How exactly would that be a problem?
Also people are comparing it to Samsung and that it can be unlocked by using a photo and on and on and on…
My concerns are more about ease of use. When I get in my car I place the iPhone on a magnetic holder, hold my thumb on the reader, do what I need to do, and drive away. Will I have to look at the phone now? I guess so? Maybe not, maybe it’ll identify my face at an angle and below. Maybe there won’t be any concerns at all.
We’ll see!
As with most of the other FUD spread by fools, word-of-mouth about how well the new gear actually works will likely sneak in under the noise and attract new customers to the phone. And commenters on The Verge will have something new to be angry about.
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