American Psychologist's published journal found that AI-powered facial recognition is now able to accurately identify a person's political affiliation based on the person's expressionless face.
The research was conducted by the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and was joined by 591 participants.
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Facial Recognition Algorithm Detects Political Preferences
The participants were given a questionnaire that assessed their political beliefs and insights. Afterward, they were scanned by the researchers' AI algorithm to classify where each person fell on the political spectrum.
The study claimed that the algorithm was able to accurately pinpoint a person's political orientation even if it was "decorrelated with age, gender, and ethnicity." However, it produced higher accuracy when given access to these information.
"We demonstrate that political orientation can be predicted from neutral facial images by both humans and algorithms, even when factors like age, gender, and ethnicity are accounted for," the study concluded.
AI Facial Recognition Shares Surprising Results
The researchers also studied the difference between average facial outlines of the "most liberal and most conservative males and females." Based on their analysis, liberals tend to have smaller lower faces, downward lips and noses, and smaller chins compared to conservatives.
Moreover, the researchers argued that the assessment showed that physical appearance can influence personality development. Once the alleged correlation between facial morphologies and political preferences, a database was created to classify each participant.
According to the researchers, their hypothesis worked after verifying the results of the facial recognition based on the previous analysis.
The study also concluded that biometric surveillance technology is becoming more threatening. The rise of AI paired with facial recognition could be used on targeted political messaging online.
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