Special Reporter of the newspaper Ren Qibao reporter Ni Hao Liu Yang
On the morning of the 13th, Beijing time, Apple held its 2017 fall conference and unveiled a range of new smartphones, including the long-awaited iPhone X, the 10th-anniversary special edition. The iPhone X broke from Apple’s traditional naming convention and immediately attracted widespread attention due to its Face ID facial recognition feature. Soon after its release, numerous online discussions emerged in China regarding the security of this latest and most advanced Apple device. Is the facial recognition technology used on iPhones reliable? What potential does it hold for future applications? With the rise of mobile payments, many people now only need their phones to complete transactions in most situations. In the future, maybe people won’t even have to carry a phone as an external device — just their own face could be enough for financial services. Could this be the next big thing?
"Swiss Face" Unlocks Apple Phone Sample
The iPhone X removed the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and replaced it with the "Face ID" facial unlock technology. All sensors are located within the "notch" at the top of the screen. Apple uses the front-facing camera to project over 30,000 invisible light points onto the user's face, creating a unique depth map. When unlocking, it compares this data with an infrared scan. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple's marketing director Phil Schiller mentioned that the system can adapt to changes like different hairstyles, glasses, or hats. It works in both bright and dark environments.
The U.S. "Time" Weekly website reported that Face ID supports Apple Pay and all current third-party apps that use fingerprint recognition. However, during the keynote, Craig Federico, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, faced a moment of embarrassment when his face wasn't recognized. Apple experts claim that facial recognition is highly secure, as the chance of someone else having the same facial features is one in a million (compared to one in five thousand for fingerprints), unless you have an identical twin.
On the 13th, Dr. He Ran, a researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Pattern Recognition at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained the general process of facial recognition technology to the Global Times: cameras capture face images, then align them into a uniform scale. These images are then fed into a deep neural network to extract facial features, which are compared against a database. If the match exceeds a set threshold, the device recognizes the person.
What is the current level of "face scanning"? Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of China Mobile, told the Global Times that, based on Apple's disclosure, the security of its facial recognition technology is not an issue. However, the real challenge lies in large-scale daily applications. Whether consumers accept the convenience of facial recognition will be the biggest test for Apple's technology. “Authentication is a high-frequency action. Every consumer is verified hundreds of times a day. If the process is slow or inaccurate, users won’t adopt it.â€
How accurate is facial recognition? Yang Fan, co-founder and vice president of Shangtang Technology, told the Global Times that accuracy varies depending on the application scenario. As technology advances, facial recognition is expected to break through more complex thresholds. Currently, it is most mature in internet finance authentication and security field comparisons.
Regarding disguises, such as wearing masks or makeup, according to Shangtang’s algorithms, the system can recognize faces covered up to 40%. With continuous improvements in deep learning-based algorithms, facial recognition can work under greater occlusion conditions.
According to reports, facial recognition has begun to be widely used in China, with high accuracy in areas like residential access control and office attendance systems. However, there are still technical challenges in some special scenarios. Large-scale facial recognition in crowded places, such as the Beijing subway during peak hours, remains difficult. How to quickly and accurately identify multiple faces at once is still a research focus. Other challenges include low-resolution scenes, night-time recognition, weather interference, and high-speed motion identification. Additionally, ensuring the system can distinguish between a real person and a photo or video is another critical issue.
Is the "face" phone safe?
According to the American magazine "Linkage," a common shortcoming of biometric unlocking methods is that physiological characteristics like faces and fingerprints cannot be changed easily. Once compromised, they are harder to reset than passwords. The article noted that the safety of facial recognition also depends on context. For most users, facial recognition is relatively safe because it’s hard for a thief to steal a phone and scan the victim's face. However, for those at higher risk of abduction or detention, they might be forced to unlock their devices. To address this, Apple requires users to open their eyes and look directly at the screen to unlock.
Matt Green, an information security expert at Johns Hopkins University, said, “I’m worried about Apple’s decision to prevent photos from unlocking the iPhone X. Existing 3D sensors can solve this issue, but Apple hasn’t disclosed what technology it’s using. We don’t know how safe our phones really are.â€
Regarding potential face phishing attacks, Yang Fan believes these can be completely avoided through technical solutions. Current industry defenses include live detection technology, which identifies whether the content is a real person or a fake. Shangtang Technology can detect differences between synthetic videos/images and natural ones, effectively distinguishing high-definition photos, PS, 3D models, and other fraud attempts. According to Shangtang, the current rate of such attacks is around two-thirds, and effective defense rates reach 95% or higher.
How big is the future of "face payment"? When it comes to the future of facial recognition, many industry experts are optimistic. Yang Fan believes that as a non-contact biometric technology, facial recognition offers great convenience and will be applied in more and more scenarios. Beyond just unlocking phones, "face scanning" has vast potential in mobile applications, such as remote identity verification for financial services.
Yan Shuicheng, dean of the 360 Institute of Artificial Intelligence, told the Global Times that face authentication isn’t perfect in all situations. “With the rapid development of technology, things like simulation headsets, holograms, and face tracking are becoming more common. Facial recognition alone has limitations and no absolute security. Therefore, for high-security scenarios like privacy and payments, it’s important to combine face recognition with other biometric data like voice, fingerprints, and irises to increase security.†▲
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