This New Facial Recognition Extension IDs Celebrities in Videos — and It’s Actually Pretty Useful
Jun 03 2020
RealNetworks is releasing a browser extension that automatically identifies celebrities and other public figures in YouTube and Netflix videos, using the same facial recognition technology that the company originally developed for use with live surveillance video at schools, casinos and airports."StarSearch by Real" doubles as a video navigation tool, pinpointing the places the celebs appear in the videos, and letting users quickly jump to those spots.
<p>No, it's not going to revolutionize the web, <a href="https://25yearsofstreaming.com/" target="_blank">like the company did 25 years ago</a> with its early streaming media technology. But I've been trying out a preview, and it's a surprisingly handy little tool, albeit in a pretty narrow set of circumstances.</p><p>So far, I'm primarily using it to skip directly to the portion of a news segment that features the person I'm interested in hearing from.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM3MDM5Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzg0NDg5NH0.DYW-syBmwZpUSMBGPjmqy6ivgX6sQo07p0sFDSIcD5I/image.png?width=980" id="b634a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e701ed88172510c9879795182f038021" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Realnetworks" />
</p><p>StarSearch is available starting today as a Chrome extension for Windows and Mac, and as a feature of the new RealPlayer 20/20 software for Windows PCs.<br/></p><p>It's not available via set-top devices or smartphones. But the way RealNetworks CEO and founder Rob Glaser sees it, when it comes to video, the PC is back.</p><p>"A super interesting thing has happened in the last three months, which is the PC has yet again moved to the center of video in the context of the pandemic," Glaser said on a recent video call where he and other RealNetworks showed the new products. "It's really been a Renaissance period for PCs."</p><p>Although the Chrome extension is limited to Netflix and YouTube at launch, the company says it will expand to more video apps and streaming services over time.<br/></p><p>"We figured those were the two best places to start, but we're going to branch out support to pretty much any major video source on the web," Glaser said.</p><p>The release comes at a time of heightened concern over facial recognition technologies due to issues of privacy and bias. This consumer application, focused on celebrities, isn't likely to raise those kinds of alarm bells, but it's an example of how pervasive facial recognition is becoming in many technology products.</p><p>It's the first time RealNetworks has brought AI into one of its consumer products. It's also the first expansion of the company's SAFR facial recognition technology beyond its core market in live video surveillance. The company <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/realnetworks-debuts-facial-recognition-software-k-12-schools-raising-ethical-questions/" target="_blank">launched SAFR two years ago</a>, initially for schools, before expanding to public health and public safety.</p><p>StarSearch is a free extension. It brings up thumbnail celebrity bios that link to a RealPlayer "Discover" site that includes ads, but the main benefit to RealNetworks would be if StarSearch were to spur more RealPlayer downloads. RealPlayer these days is used largely for downloading, organizing and playing videos. RealPlayer 20/20 is a Windows app that comes in both free and premium versions, starting at $24.99.</p><p>In the StarSearch browser extension, the facial recognition is limited to celebrities and other notable people, but people can use it in RealPlayer 20/20 to tag and find family members and friends in their own videos.</p><p><a href="http://www.danrayburn.com/" target="_blank">Dan Rayburn</a>, a streaming media analyst and consultant who got a preview of the technology, said he could envision StarSearch ultimately expanding beyond celebrities, even identifying inanimate objects such as a company name, a type of car, or a sports team in a video.</p><p>"Over time, it's going to become more and more personalized, where you have more options and you can pick what you want that tag to really be," Rayburn said.</p><p>RealNetworks says StarSearch differs from other offerings, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/adlp/xray" target="_blank">such as Amazon X-Ray on Prime Video</a>, by using AI to identify people on the fly, rather than manually indexing videos in advance.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM3MDM5NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDg5MzU1MH0.InlNa3Ds_5-IJENkHezWC5KP0RNQ6Hmd5kCy6-qWaAk/image.png?width=980" id="139a9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cbac8ea49fe0faeb585ab50a17681882" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Realnetworks" />
</p><p>Glaser, who worked at Microsoft before starting RealNetworks, said the interaction between the SAFR and StarSearch teams reminds him of how Microsoft Windows became better back in the day because Microsoft's internal Excel and Word teams were building on the platform and pushing Windows to improve.<br/></p><p>"Having a team of people that are really relying on SAFR, putting it through the paces, pushing it, has actually made SAFR better," he said. "So hopefully we'll get some synergies like that out of this too."</p><p>Asked if RealNetworks secured the StarSearch trademark from the company that holds the rights <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Search" target="_blank">to the old Ed McMahon talent search show</a>, Glaser noted that it's specifically called "StarSearch by Real."</p><p>RealNetworks' Consumer Media division, which includes RealPlayer, generated $3.5 million in revenue in the first quarter, about 8% of the company's overall revenue. RealNetworks <a href="https://investor.realnetworks.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/RealNetworks-Announces-First-Quarter-2020-Financial-Results/default.aspx" target="_blank">posted a net loss of $4.6 million</a>, with $19 million in cash on hand as of the end of the quarter, after <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2020/realnetworks-ceo-rob-glaser-putting-10m-money-back-company/" target="_blank">Glaser invested $10 million in the company in February</a>. The company <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2020/publicly-traded-seattle-tech-stalwart-realnetworks-receives-2-87m-federal-relief-loan/" target="_blank">received a $2.87 million loan</a> through the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program in April.</p><p><a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2020/realnetworks-browser-extension-uses-facial-recognition-id-celebrities-videos-actually-pretty-useful/" target="_blank"><em>This story first appeared on GeekWire.</em></a></p>
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The creator of the emotive robot called "Moxie" sees a new wave of machines that recognize human emotions and will change how business is done.
"We are seeing a future that's a lot better than the dystopian future of robots taking over the world," Paolo Pirjanian, founder and chief executive officer at Embodied, Inc. told dot.LA in a virtual strategy session on May 5.
<p>The session, featuring Pirjanian and <a href="https://www.calibratevc.com/#home" target="_blank">Calibrate Venture</a>s co-founder Jason Schoettler, featured discussion of Los Angeles' role in making the next wave of emotionally intelligent robots, the ethical dilemmas of having machine companions and how social robots will change people's lives.</p><p>Watch below, and <a href="https://dot.la/st/newsletters" target="_blank">sign up for our newsletter</a> to be notified of new strategy sessions.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1ea7cf5aa3f8488698e55aace5660ded"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_eVNjtYLzjM?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Strategy Session: The Rise of Robotics</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eVNjtYLzjM" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzIwNjI1MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTM4MTU4Mn0.V-ehTHqqAZhkJlFhOYvDco6Qn-w0ZYPqssfQ8FWWY9k/image.jpg?width=980" id="b219d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="749b25953d0d88a5915a59a55296f29a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Dr. Paolo Pirjanian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Embodied, Inc." />
Dr. Paolo Pirjanian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Embodied, Inc.
<p>Dr. Paolo Pirjanian oversees technology, research and advanced development. Prior to joining iRobot, he served as chief executive officer of Evolution Robotics, Inc. for seven years. Before that, Pirjanian was the company's chief technology officer. Earlier in his career, he worked as a lecturer in the computer science department at the University of Southern California and as a researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he received the Technical Leadership Award. Pirjanian is the former U.S. chairman of IEEE Robotics and received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award in 2004. He holds a Ph.D. in robotics from Aalborg University.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzIwMjA5My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTQyMTgzNX0.uAdNR1CAgavnhTNQWT_BIA0yuoygukA_-6wRXzNYNzw/image.jpg?width=1500&coordinates=1954%2C0%2C446%2C0&height=2000" id="d2502" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="733081f159c4dd204a2658a1eac1f8ca" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Jason Schoettler, Partner at Calibrate Ventures
Jason Schoettler, Partner at Calibrate Ventures
<p>Jason Schoettler is a partner at Calibrate Ventures, a venture capital firm he co-founded in 2017.</p><p>He leads investments for Calibrate Ventures across its areas of focus: advanced automation, B2B SaaS, and managed marketplaces, including its investments in Alpha, Built Robotics, Embodied, FarmWise, Pared and XStream Trucking. </p><p>Jason has a proven track-record of identifying disruptive businesses and facilitating their development while generating outsized returns. Before forming Calibrate, he served as a Managing Director for over a decade at Shea Ventures, where he was responsible for numerous investments with notable exits, including: Dollar Shave Club (acquired by Unilever), Evolution Robotics (acquired by iRobot), Osmo (acquired by Byju's), SI-BONE (SIBN), and VictorOps (acquired by Splunk). </p><p>Prior to Shea Ventures, Jason served in an operating role at Oak Grove Systems, an enterprise software spin-out from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, and as a management consultant at Ernst & Young. </p><p>Jason grew up in Central California and holds a BA from University of Notre Dame and MBA from Claremont Graduate University. </p>From Your Site Articles
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A Credit Score For Your COVID-19 Risk? USC Gets Federal Funds to Create a Location-Based Mobile App
Apr 30 2020
Researchers at the University of Southern California, Emory University and the University of Texas Health Science Center have received a federal research grant to create a mobile app for contact tracing the novel coronavirus that hopes to track a person's real-time location and symptoms "for quarantine and decontamination." The project would use collected data to calculate a type of credit score of your COVID-19 risk and uses that to help calculate an aggregate risk score for locations like your neighborhood grocery store over time.
<p>As part of the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2027794&HistoricalAwards=false" target="_blank">National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research award</a>, created for situations like the ongoing pandemic, USC's Cyrus Shahabi, a professor of computer science, electrical engineering and spatial sciences, and chair of the Computer Science Department was granted $67,185. The project, entitled "REACT, for REAal-time Contact Tracing and risk monitoring via privacy-enhanced tracking of users' locations and symptoms" is a multi-university with <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2027783&HistoricalAwards=false" target="_blank">researchers at Emory University</a> and <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2027790&HistoricalAwards=false" target="_blank">the University of Texas Health Science Center</a>, with total funding at $151,477. Work officially begins on Friday.</p><p>The universities hope to have a working mobile app by August, in time for the start of the fall semester, Shahabi said.</p><p>It's yet another digital twist on contact tracing, a pillar of public health and infectious disease control that can be onerous detective work. It involves identifying those who have been in contact with infected persons to help isolate and limit spread of a virus, especially during epidemic — or, in this case, pandemic conditions.</p><p>Enabling such efforts have become a recent focus by governmental entities and organizations. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has said that contact tracing capacity and expanded testing are crucial measures that need to be in place before stay-at-home orders can be loosened. That includes establishing a contact tracing "workforce" and developing a statewide training academy to train 10,000 workers to do contact tracing.</p><p>Shahabi envisions a use case where people with higher personal risk scores might decide to stay home or get tested for COVID-19, and where areas that are deemed high-risk because people are later known to be infected, like a particular supermarket, might be avoided. Policymakers could warn the public to avoid an area that's known to be a potential hotspot of infection.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<a href="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE4MDQyMi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwOTYyNjIzOX0.WF9mynTGIsL86vnsZcq0cZ8dGlajVVa-wFYMGKOYp4I/img.png?width=980" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE4MDQyMi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwOTYyNjIzOX0.WF9mynTGIsL86vnsZcq0cZ8dGlajVVa-wFYMGKOYp4I/img.png?width=980" id="26233" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f1f8c959084157f204f214c8f66d0188" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Graphic by Haotian Mai/USC</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">
<a href="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE4MDQyMi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwOTYyNjIzOX0.WF9mynTGIsL86vnsZcq0cZ8dGlajVVa-wFYMGKOYp4I/img.png?width=980" target="_blank">assets.rebelmouse.io</a>
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</p><p>The main problem with contact tracing is that it relies on human memory, in this case over as long as a 14-day period, which can be especially faulty, Shahabi said. It also has a built-in delay between when an infected person is identified and when those who have been exposed are notified. Immediate isolation is only possible with digital contact tracing, he said.<br/></p><p>A recent Science research report found that SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19, is spreading "too fast to be contained by manual contact tracing, but could be controlled if this process was faster, more efficient and happened at scale" using digital methods like a mobile app.<br/></p><p>While companies like Apple and Google who have engaged in a rare collaborative effort to create an "exposure notification API" that would be utilized to inform people via bluetooth signals on their phone that they may have been near an infected person -- allegedly without jeopardizing privacy.</p><p>Shahabi said that Apple and Google's proposed method could provide many false positives or negatives, because it doesn't take into account factors like whether a person is wearing a mask or how close they are. For those who are warned, it could be unclear as to what to do about it, and eventually people may become inured to alarm bells that are raised because of it, he said.</p><p>Countries such as South Korea or China have used location-based digitized contact tracing. However, it has only been successful because citizens are forced to download it, opt into location monitoring, and regularly check in or otherwise be visited by enforcement authorities, according to Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA who has worked in contact notification for 25 years in areas like HIV in the United States.</p><p>"In that setting where there's 100% mandated compliance, it's been shown it can work, in our setting in the United States, I don't see that really happening," Klausner said. "We have enough problems with governors issuing orders and denying free personal movement, that the idea that people are going to be ordered to download apps to monitor their movement is highly unlikely and probably not constitutional."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/052607-014-DohenyLibrary-USC.jpg" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGd2lraXBlZGlhJTJGY29tbW9ucyUyRmYlMkZmYyUyRjA1MjYwNy0wMTQtRG9oZW55TGlicmFyeS1VU0MuanBnJmhvPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGdXBsb2FkLndpa2ltZWRpYS5vcmcmcz01MjMmaD0zMTUxNTUwY2ZlOGI2MTg4ZDdjMTQ3NzYxZWRiYjgxNDJlMmRhNDZmMzFjYjMzMDVmY2ExZTFmMzM3YTg5MDQ1JnNpemU9OTgweCZjPTM1ODg2OTExMTgiLCJleHBpcmVzX2F0IjoxNjAyNzcxNTU4fQ.4ntBzbTwtWFztpry6_RBWS0faCfU3KCUcsx_-MgYwFs/img.jpg" id="85583" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0665268410ed8fd3b1e1213ba4ce9b37" /></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">USC's Doheny Library. </small>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/052607-014-DohenyLibrary-USC.jpg" target="_blank">upload.wikimedia.org</a>
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</p><p>Privacy advocates have repeatedly raised alarms over efforts by governments in China, South Korea, Israel, and other areas in the world to stop the viral spread through surveillance, and have warned about ensuring that any privacy tradeoffs are narrow and time-limited.<br/></p><p>"There's several red flags," said Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy group. That includes the fact that GPS, when you're not in an area with tall buildings, provides accurate information roughly down to 15 feet. Precise location data isn't accurate enough to do reliable contact tracing. If people choose to limit the specificity of their location data, then it will be even worse.</p><p>"Even if I just stay in my house all day, there are probably hundreds of people within a thousand feet of me that I never interact with," Cyphers said. </p><p>Shahabi has repeatedly brought up concerns about privacy implications of the work in an interview with dot.LA and in the grant itself, stating that "such use also heightens concerns on individual privacy and data abuse" and that there needs to be "a careful balance or privacy protection with public health benefits."</p><p>The app would enable users to control and refine how frequently their data is captured and how detailed it is, the grant states. The grant would also investigate "privacy-preserving" ways to share collected data for further research studies.</p><p>Shahabi would aggregate the risk scores for individuals using AI to calculate risk scores for community areas as part of what he wants to call his pandemic tool kit, or Pandemic Risk Evaluation Platform (PREP). He believes that this aggregation would somewhat alleviate individual privacy concerns for public use of the data by policymakers and others, and is also less potentially problematic than the Apple and Google method.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE4MDQ2NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTcyMjY1NX0.Ldxx0YBHKre49hPgKgmrascSBDvCnGCHlC8GW3WPjbA/image.jpg?width=980" id="b58fb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d62b1ab1812c71bb1c468ac143516a3b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Cyrus Shahabi, USC professor of computer science, electrical engineering and spatial sciences, and chair of the Computer Science Department.
<p>Shahabi said he is working on getting some raw location data from an outside company to begin doing some risk analysis work.</p><p>For privacy advocates like Cyphers, the concern is if user location data is ultimately collected and stored by a single entity, it ups the privacy risk to people who participate. And the privacy risks are still "massive" even with low-resolution data, he said. The data can give a general idea of where a person lives and works, plus when the person arrives there and elsewhere. Such cell-site data is used by police to make cases regularly.</p><p>Risk scores could also become problematic if a school or employer requires students or workers reveal them as a condition of receiving a benefit, entering a building or returning to their office, Cyphers said. How the scores are created, whether users are informed about what makes them up, and how they're used are all crucial questions that need to be transparently answered.</p>
<p>"When you introduce 'scoring' that takes other factors into account, it complicates everything, and increases the risk that users will be misinformed or discriminated against due to factors beyond their control," Cyphers said.</p><p>In China, the government has used Alipay Health Code, giving citizens a QR code inside the app that's colored red, yellow or green to indicate your health status, with the color green enabling you to travel freely. Law enforcement authorities were involved in the app's development, according to China's state-run media.<br/></p><p>Klausner, the epidemiologist, said "we generally feel that voluntary notification where we educate people and empower them with tools to do the notification themselves is the most effective (way) and we've built digital tools for them to use over the past few decades," including <a href="https://tellyourcontacts.org/" target="_blank">a new one that lets you notify people swiftly and directly via text or email</a> immediately and directly.</p><p>He added: "It's going to be difficult to get Americans to agree to involuntary surveillance" and to agree to download or opt into such location tracking on a basis large enough to be effective.</p><p><em>--</em></p><p><em>Do you have a story that needs to be told? My DMs are open on Twitter </em><a href="https://twitter.com/latams" target="_blank"><em>@latams</em></a><em>. You can also </em><em>email me</em><em>, or ask for my Signal.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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