‘Minority report-style face scanning’ - iPhone X’s Face ID creeps people out

iPhone X Face ID
iPhone X Face ID Credit: Apple

As Apple unveiled its new iPhone X yesterday there was one development that left some viewers thoroughly unsettled: Face ID.

The new feature will allow people to unlock the new flagship smartphone just using their face. Apple hailed the technology as the ‘future of how we unlock iPhones and protect sensitive information’.

Describing how  Face ID will work, Apple said: “Every time you glance at iPhone X, it detects your face with an IR image, the dot projector projects IR dots, the image and the dot pattern create a mathematical model of your face, which is checked against the one you make when you set it up. And it unlocks the phone in real-time.”

Apple iPhone X Face ID
Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, introduces Face ID at Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California Credit: Apple

Apple says the 3D front-facing camera learns what users look like and is only inaccurate one in 1 million times.

As well as unlocking the phone, Face ID will allow users to authenticate Apple Pay transactions and create the customisable animated emoji. 

Although Apple doesn't seem to have quite perfected the technology yet as its Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, suffered an embarrassing setback demonstrating Face ID during the keynote at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California.

iPhone X Apple Face ID
The iPhone X Credit: Apple

In terms of security, the only real information Apple gave was that Face ID is not meant to unlock the phone if your eyes are closed. That did little to quell fears as people took to Twitter to express their concern at this new, seemingly Orwellian, feature.

For some the feature was a harbinger of dystopia

Others envisaged problems with the new technology

Or potential abuses 

Other concerns aired were less germane 

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