Face Recognition for Google Glass Coming From Lambda Labs

Lambda Labs is a new San Francisco Startup working on a Google Glass API. The company is going to bring face recognition to Google’s smart glasses through an API accessible to all developers.

If Lambda Labs manages to create a high quality face recognition it will make developers’ lives much easier, by allowing them to develop advanced apps without building their own face recognition software.

According to Stephen Balaban, Lambda Labs co-founder, the API will be released within a week to some developers.

The company already has another face recognition API, used by 1,000 developers, which gets over 5 million API calls monthly. But the Google Glass API will allow developers to create unique new apps, thanks to the revolutionary device.

By using this technology, Glass users will be able to ask their device to remember faces, then tell them who that is. You could also find your friends easier in a crowd or you could also find a person based on his social media profile.

Unfortunately the technology won’t work in real-time, because Google Glass first has to take a photo, then send it to the developer’s website and wait for a response, which can take a few seconds. And if the technology fails to recognize a face in that photo, the user might have to take another one.

At the moment everyone is buzzing about Google Glass’ privacy issues. The idea of everyone having an always-on camera on their heads is scary for some and try to get Google Glass banned, though this is unlikely to happen.

Balaban’s fear is that Google might ban his API due to privacy concerns, even though he doesn’t break the Google Glass TOS. He believes Google might change it after being bashed by privacy regulators for the app his company is working on. Google Glass has been focused by regulators since it was first announced and we keep seeing stories of companies or officials trying to ban the device.

But it’s unlikely that Google’s Glass will see much regulations, considering that we already have at least one digital camera in our pocket and it’s also very cheap to hold a spy camera attached to your shirt. The only difference is that one knows when he’s in front of the Google Glass, while the spy camera is totally undercover.