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Comment by pcl | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, in the last few weeks, FaceID just started working for me with a couple of the types of masks I’ve been wearing. I wonder if they have made some tweaks to their recognition algorithms / are doing any sort of additional training on the fly.

I don’t have an Apple Watch, and am running 14.4.2.

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I don't have any links to back it up or anything, but my impression is that Face ID continually trains itself as you use it to help keep up with facial changes over time. At the very least I know it takes the data from failed attempts immediately followed by passcode unlock and uses it for training.

Depending on how either is implemented I could see it getting "used" to a masked face with enough samples. The question for me is if this makes it more susceptible to false positives, e.g. unlocking for people other than the owner wearing a mask.

Interesting I wonder how it deals with the case of e.g. someone giving their phone to another person (e.g. spouse) who then uses the passcode. I guess they could try and work out if it is a variation of the same person or if it is someone else entirely.

Every time you attempt authentication, and it doesn’t recognize you’re wearing a mask in particular, it’ll “retrain” the model when you authenticate with your passcode. If it was only a little bit off, eventually you’d retrain enough to get there with a mask. They mention this in their Security doc if I recall correctly.

I thought that AI could identify someone even if they were wearing a mask and our iPhone's were being silly. I've seen a few videos of Chinese grocery shoppers paying with their face with a mask on.

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