Ads that can scan your face and deliver gender-biased messages – Minority Report time folks

When we think of the sci-fi movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise everyone generally first thinks of the segments of the movie where the advertising would pick up on the person walking by and target them with the content of the ad.

Since t hen we have used the movie as some sort of reference points in many ways, from user interfaces to those ads and how many words were written about how long it would be before we actually saw those types of things in our day to day life right now.

While the user interfaces are still probably a few years off it would seem that when it comes to advertising we are actually reaching that point now thanks to a new ad campaign in London that can scan your face and upon determining your gender and then deliver a specific ad if you are a woman.

Children’s charity Plan UK is releasing a campaign called “Because I Am a Girl” to benefit girl’s education in poor countries. The ad will include a computer, a touchscreen, and a high-def camera that can scan the faces of passersby and determine their gender. Women and girls will be shown a full message from the charity, while males will just see a message directing them to the charity’s website. The camera measures the distance between facial features to determine gender and the ad’s designers say it will be 90 percent accurate.

via VentureBeat

The company behind the ad and the technology, Clear Channel, says that they aren’t keeping any personal data but I’m sorry, I have a really hard time swallowing that at all.

image courtesy of Trimensions

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Tags: advertising, Minority Report, Privacy

About the Author

Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).