An HP MediaSmart Computer that is supposed to follow the face of its user wherever they move apparently can’t recognize African-American faces. Here is the video:
Many of the commenters on the video (the ones that are not completely racist and horrible, that is) seem to think the problem is that Desi and Wanda are backlit, which is interfering with the software’s ability to recognize black faces*. I would love to see HP try to explain that in a manual.
(Thanks, Mightygodking.)
* A digression and a mini-review: I recently watched part of the first season of Better Off Ted on DVD, and one very funny episode centered around a similar problem with motion detectors. That episode, along with the first two episodes of the series, were the only reason to watch the show, which became very generic very quickly.
Not only are the faces backlit but the background is particularly bright. There are floureescent lights pointing into the camera in the background. This is really going to throw off the white balance of the camera. Also when you look at the two faces the white woman has a lot of contrast in her face. More so than even a lot of other white people. She has dark eyebrows and eyes and very light skin. Also her entire face is framed in dark hair giving the camera a good way to tell where the face begins and ends. I think this is less about Desi’s face not being picked up and more about Wanda’s face being particularly easy to track under poor lighting.
“Very generic”? I can’t agree — ‘Better Off Ted’ is one of the few sitcoms around that actually has a distinct flavor of humor. It’s not ‘Arrested Development’ unique, but it’s far more particular than, say, ‘How I Met Your Mother’, which plays around with story structure but traffics in pretty standard sitcom emotions and humor–and keep in mind when you say ‘generic’, you’re talking about the standard set by the likes of ‘Two and a Half Men’ and ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’. ‘Better Off Ted’, whether you find it all that funny or not, has its own humor.
This is a racist post. It’s not one’s ethnicity or race that is causing the software problem, it’s their skin color. The software works by tracking the contrast between the eye and the face. Naturally dark eyes against light skin work best. As for him entering the frame and breaking the software, the software can only track one face, for obvious reason.
However, that said, tracking darker faces although difficult is not impossible. The software should’ve allowed the end user to calibrate the face tracking. So in that sense, HP failed, but it’s not a conspiracy.
I think this is a pretty despicable attempt at calling out racism where there is none and does a disservice to the fragile race relations in this country.
And in case you’re wondering, I’m dark-skinned.
@3 – you may be dark-skinned, but methinks you are also thin-skinned. I thought it was a hilarious video of a software issue making a device seem to favor one race over another, and it seems like the two people in the video were intending it as such.
He bought one for Christmas? Poor devil!
@3 He said the computer is racist. It’s funny because computers aren’t humans with prejudiced thoughts… they are computers. Did you notice them smiling and giggling in the video?
That is hysterical.
regarding the “they’re back lit”, well, aren’t the both back lit?
can we not admit that maybe the software has a problem that the designers didn’t account for? does every brush with reality have to make racists, i mean idiots, i mean the idiot apologists of racists, cry and whine and have little tantrums?
and Desi is a very funny man.
While the computer did not recognize Desi’s face, it did record his voice when he later told Wanda to “move your big ass ’round this way so I can work on that zipper, baby.”
apparently can’t recognize African-American faces
I think that would have been an appropriate place to use “black” instead of “African-American” since (I’m guessing) the HP laptop isn’t requiring passport scans or analyzing accents.
I suppose the real question is whether the thing does any better in more typical lighting situations. If it still doesn’t, then, yeah, HP (or whoever wrote software that ended up getting bought by HP for this) should probably have tested on faces other than those of the pasty-faced geeks writing the software.
@2 Totally agreed. It was the only new show of last season that was worth a damn. Too bad ABC is burning of the remainder of the episodes before February to make room for Lost. That doesn’t spell good news for BOT, but fortunately, this new incarnation of “Scrubs” is going down with it. But back to my original point: Paul is wrong.
On topic, the video’s pretty funny. My favorite comment I’ve seen (stolen from digg): “A camera in a store that doesn’t track black people. Hmm.”
Altho this is funny and all, it does bring up one of the many unrecognized privileges white people have – everything is designed with us in mind. Something not working or matching because of our skin tone almost never happens.
Should have gotten an iMac instead of one of those HP POS.