Kinect Not Colorblind, Some Testers Find

Does Microsoft’s new face- and motion-sensing peripheral for the Xbox 360, the Kinect, have problems recognizing dark-skinned faces?

Testers at GameSpot say that it does. Specifically, they wrote, “two dark-skinned GameSpot employees experienced problems with the system’s facial recognition abilities.” GameSpot noted that this affected facial recognition only, and that the system was still able to recognize body movements (its “skeletal tracking system,” which is based on infrared light) so people of any skin tone could play all the games just fine.

The issue echoes a problem that HP ran into last year, when a video popped up claiming, with tongue slightly in cheek, that the face-recognition feature in HP laptops was racist because it was able to track a white person’s face, while seeming to ignore that of the dark-skinned person next to her.

However, Consumer Reports investigated the problem with its own tests and found no problems with face recognition or skeletal tracking, with one important exception: The Kinect was unable to do face recognition accurately in the dark, regardless of how light or dark the subject’s skin was.

That’s because the Kinect uses visible light for its face recognition, and is therefore more sensitive to darkness.

It also has trouble with sunlight, as Wired reviewer Chris Kohler found. In other words, Kinect may not be racist, but it might be a vampire.

Have you seen any issues with face recognition software, either in the Kinect or in other products? Speak out in the comments!

Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

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