AI may unfairly judge Black women based on their hairstyles, potentially affecting job opportunities, Forbes reported . Janice Gassam Asare, Ph.D., whose website describes her as a workplace equity strategist, author, and journalist, shared in her Substack, “The Pink Elephant,” that she used ChatGPT’s image generator, DALL-E, to create eight images and examine how three different AI tools evaluate job candidates based on them. The photos featured a Black woman and a white woman — both in their late 30s and wearing identical outfits — with varying hairstyles. The Black woman’s styles included straight hair, a big afro, a teeny-weeny afro (TWA), and braids; the white woman’s included straight hair, a pixie cut, a bob, and long curls. Two AI tools — Clarifai and Amazon Rekognition — produced results showing that the Black woman with braids was the only one not labeled as intelligent and received lower happiness and more neutral emotion scores than her straight-haired or afro...

After raising $5 million in funding, Parfait is on its way to disrupting the wig industry with the help of technology. The women-led startup is said to be the first to integrate facial recognition and artificial intelligence to provide buyers with customizable wig products. According to a press release sent to AfroTech, the seed round was spearheaded by Upfront Ventures and Serena Ventures. Ulu Ventures, Unshackled Ventures, Contrary Capital, Visible Hands, TRUE Capital’s Culture Fund, Omar Johnson, Chamillionaire, Tristan Walker, and Upland Workshop participated in the round. “Parfait’s mission to leverage Al to solve core issues for both the tech industry and communities of color is something we, at Serena Ventures, have believed in since the beginning,” said Serena Williams, Managing Partner at Serena Ventures, in a statement. “She went on to say “It’s been inspiring to witness their incredible achievements so far, and we’re proud to invest in this next phase of Parfait’s...

Facial recognition technology has been a known issue in police conduct for years now, and the problem has yet to be resolved. New Jersey man Nijeer Parks, 33, has unfortunately become the third known Black man to be falsely identified and wrongfully-arrested for false facial recognition, according to The New York Times. The incident occurred in February 2019, when Parks was accused of allegedly shoplifting candy and trying to hit a police officer with a car at a Hampton Inn in Woodbridge, NJ. Engadget shares officers were called to the Hampton Inn where the alleged shoplifter presented them with a Tennessee driver’s license, which they eventually confirmed to be fake. State agencies then utilized facial recognition systems to analyze the photo from the ID and found an apparent match in Parks’ state ID. Despite being 30 miles from the incident at the time, officers still identified Parks as the suspect. As a result, Parks spent a total of 10 days in jail last year, and $5,000 to...

The safety of protesters on the frontlines of the rebellions across the country has been a grave concern for many. Protesters have urged one another to either leave their phones at home or turn off their location services as police officers have been known to use tracking technology to trace protesters and scan their faces in surveillance videos. Buzzfeed News reported that protesters in Minneapolis are being watched by law enforcement agencies that have trialed or deployed a variety of surveillance tools. To combat surveillance tools used to target these protesters, Adobe shared that they offer several editing programs to help blur faces out of people’s content, USA Today reports . Unlike Photoshop — which only includes effects that help blur unwanted faces from pictures — video editing apps such as Adobe Premiere and After Effects helps to seal the identities of faces included in videos. According to USA Today , Adobe offers a variety of prices for their monthly subscriptions that...

This article was originally published on 07/03/2019 In June, Somerville, Massachusetts became the second city in the United States to ban facial recognition technology . Originally introduced back in May , the “Face Surveillance Full Ban Ordinance” places a moratorium on government use of facial recognition and other “remote biometric surveillance systems,” until the state develops a framework for its use. “[T]he benefits of using facial surveillance, which are few and speculative, are greatly outweighed by its harms, which are substantial,” the bill says. The bill touches on concerns previously cited by advocates, comparing the broad application of face surveillance in public spaces to requiring everyone to carry around and display a photo I.D. at all times. Under the bill, any data collected through facial recognition would be considered “unlawfully obtained.” That means it can’t be used in trials and should be deleted immediately. In addition, if the banned technology is used on...

Facial recognition has been widely criticized for the risks it poses to vulnerable communities. The technology typically reinforces pre-existing social biases, as seen by its inability to read anyone who isn’t a white man . It also poses severe privacy risks. Facial recognition makes it easy for government agencies to develop continuous, mass surveillance of vulnerable communities. With all of these risks, it’s not a technology that most people would want to use on kids. Despite that, Lockport City School District in New York is trying to test a facial and object recognition system called “Aegis.” In September, the district used $1.4 million of the $4.2 million it received in funding through the Smart Schools Bond Act to install the system, Lockport Journal reported . Superintendent Michelle Bradley announced plans to begin testing the system on June 3. Bradley described the test as an “initial implementation phase.” That means the school wanted to test the system for any necessary...

Across the United States, local governments have held discussions about facial recognition. Last week, San Francisco banned government use of the technology , while cities like Oakland, California and Somerville, Massachusetts are exploring doing the same. Each of those cities began looking closely at facial recognition due to the danger it poses to Black and brown communities. San Francisco’s own bill stated, “The propensity for facial recognition technology to endanger civil rights and civil liberties substantially outweighs its purported benefits, and the technology will exacerbate racial injustice and threaten our ability to live free of continuous government monitoring.” It’s important that local communities are starting conversations about facial recognition tech and the harms that come with it, but it also needs to occur at a higher level. After all, the risks that civil rights and privacy advocates highlight around facial recognition includes continuous, mass surveillance...

Body cameras were intended to be a way of encouraging police accountability. The idea was that if encounters were recorded, police would be unable to lie about events that took place. Now, there’s a rising concern that police may add facial recognition software to body cameras — essentially transforming them into roving face surveillance systems. A coalition of privacy and civil rights groups are taking action in California to ensure that doesn’t happen. The Body Cam Accountability Act — otherwise known as AB 1215 — was proposed by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who described it as “an important civil rights measure that will prevent exploitation of vulnerable communities.” The bill has gained support from the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Data for Black Lives, and more. In a statement obtained by AfroTech, the ACLU wrote: “The people of California were promised that body cameras would guard against police...