Microsoft quietly deletes largest public face recognition data set
ft.com
ft.com
What in the ACTUAL fuck Microsoft.
Or it could be, that no one wanted to manage it, after this person left, and decided to take it down, rather than deal with having to maintain it.
Is it ethically acceptable to republish someone's CC-licensed face annotated for the purpose of training recognition algorithms?
Is the dataset inclusive as a composite whole? Does it have biases such as “primarily white-male” or “majority white”?
Should facial recognition data and training studies of people’s faces be required to adhere to the same ethical review practices that psychology and sociology studies of people are required to adhere to?
If I were Microsoft, I would red flag every one of these questions as reason enough to take it down immediately until answered.
That person posted the image/information willingly knowing they lose all control over how it is used and who it is seen by.
Could definitely cause some potential bias though if your input set isn't filtered for some kind of diversity.
This seems like a dangerous precedent. There have been cases where images of recognisable people that were made available with some liberal licence were then used as part of marketing for deeply offensive campaigns or illegal activities, for example.
I don't think it's reasonable to say that anyone who volunteered to let others use their image for general purposes should automatically accept the kind of portrayal that would result in a defamation lawsuit in other contexts. You can call them naive for not anticipating nasty people doing that with their image, but naivety isn't a crime. Meanwhile, being portrayed deliberately and without warning as a child abuser or a supporter of a highly unpopular politician or a drug addict or a terrorism suspect could have profound and immediate consequences for the subject, who obviously didn't intend to consent to that and may have no idea it has been done until the reality catches up to them.
“All humanity has the inalienable right to control how their likeness is transformed by others. Consent must be given freely by either the human or their delegated representative, and no discrimination against refusal to permit transformation, whether by default or by declaration, shall be permissible under law.”