The Scent Of A Woman, Kiosk Style
Written by Fred J. AunFebruary 4th, 2009
Fragrance-dispensing kiosks in France are relying on face-recognition technology to decide whether the spritzes they deliver should be for men or women. Similar technology, recently displayed in Japan, delivers ads based on the ages and genders of people passing by.
These systems illustrate the advances being made in face recognition for retail applications as the technology evolves from the realm of discussion to the reality of the store, sidewalk and mall corridor. For retailers, the goal is targeting advertising to those consumers most likely to be engaged. But the effort is running headlong into some sticky ethical questions involving personal privacy. What will happen if face-recognition-powered digital signs and kiosks are able to learn the identities of shoppers merely by scanning their faces and matching those images against known consumer images?
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
