Study: LFW dataset discards the privacy rights of internet users
Occurred: February 2021
Report incident 🔥 | Improve page 💁 | Access database 🔢
Prominent dataset Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) quietly scraped Google, Flickr, YouTube and other online photo libraries, discarding the privacy rights of photo owners and subjects.
In a paper examining over 130 facial-recognition data sets compiled over 43 years, researchers Deborah Raji and Genevieve Fried singled out the LFW dataset as being the first for which 'wild' images were scraped from the internet.
According to the Technology Review, the dataset 'opened the floodgates to data collection through web search, with researchers starting to download images directly from Google, Flickr, and Yahoo without concern for consent.'
Earlier, LFW had been found to be highly skewed towards a very small subset of people, specifically white male faces, and contained 'a significant number of duplicate or nearly-duplicate images and mislabeled images.'
The finding persuaded LFW's creators to acknowledge the dataset's limitations.
System 🤖
Operator:
Developer: University of Massachussets, Amherst
Country: USA
Sector: Research/academia; Technology
Purpose: Train facial recognition systems
Technology: Dataset; Computer vision; Deep learning; Facial recognition; Facial detection; Facial analysis; Machine learning; Neural network; Pattern recognition
Issue: Bias/discrimination - race, ethnicity, gender; Ethics/values; Privacy; Transparency
Research, advocacy 🧮
Raji I.D., Fried G. (2021). About Face: A Survey of Facial Recognition Evaluation
News, commentary, analysis 🗞️
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/13/1031836/ai-ethics-responsible-data-stewardship/
https://www.ft.com/content/cf19b956-60a2-11e9-b285-3acd5d43599e
https://medium.com/voxel51/fifteen-minutes-with-fiftyone-labeled-faces-in-the-wild-6b4e2530787
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/why-racial-bias-is-prevalent-in-facial-recognition-technology
https://mashable.com/article/facial-recognition-databases-privacy-study
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/opinion/facial-recognition-race.html
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: June 2024