The global facial recognition technology market is expected to double over the coming years, from US$3.2 billion to US$7 billion in 2024. Its main applications are security, healthcare and financial operations. What does this have to do with you? Well, in a sense, we are all sponsors of this billion-dollar economy.
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The growing importance of facial recognition in the market is proportional to its relevance for monitoring the body wherever it may be. As ambient technologies evolve, integrating us into networked computing systems through sensors, microphones and cameras, facial mapping becomes increasingly decisive. Put simply, the face is the new fingerprint. Once identified, our presence can be tracked through space.
Other signs of this diffusion of control and surveillance parameters into everyday life include the extensive use of facial recognition features in apps for making short videos, the latest craze in online entertainment.
TikTok, a Chinese app that ended 2019 with one billion downloads, and Kwai, a Singaporean company with 700,000 active users, are good examples of this trend. Used mainly by young people, the former is a social network based entirely on micro-videos. The latter is a video platform that, among other features, has an app that automatically searches, upon receiving your photo, for your doppelganger (your wandering double), strolling somewhere on the planet.