HP Investigates After 'Racist Webcam' Claim

Hewlett Packard has acknowledged a complaint that its webcam technology discriminates against darker-skinned users. But it doesn't address the racism issue directly -- instead, HP points to a technical limitation.

Technology Locks onto Faces

The allegations involve a feature in the webcam which recognizes faces and then "locks on" to them, automatically moving to keep the picture in the shot as a head moves around.

The assertion comes shortly after a YouTube user uploaded a clip which appears to show that the feature fails to lock-on his face. (Source: youtube.com)

In a company blog post on the subject, HP's Tony Welch doesn't deal directly with the suggestion that the failing is down to discrimination, though he does note that both HP's staff and customers come from a wide variety of international and ethnic backgrounds.

Algorithms Measure Contrast

Welch blames the technology, which he says "is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. [HP Believes] that the camera might have difficulty 'seeing' contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting." (Source: thenextbench.com)

It seems pretty clear that whatever is causing the problem is not down to any intentional form of discrimination. It also appears there is a genuine technical issue here; leaving aside ethnicity, and considering both people in the clip have dark eyes, it's clear there is a greater degree of contrast between skin and eyes in the white woman.

Where there might be some validity to the complaints is if HP failed to pick up this problem in its testing by not testing it on non-white people. Of course, if that's the case it could simply be down to sloppiness rather than malice.

Microsoft System's Performance Questioned

This isn't the first time skin tones have caused problems for technology.

During a public demonstration of Project Natal, Microsoft's program to bring motion sensor technology to its gaming products, a journalist found the system failed to recognize his attempts to steer a virtual car. (Source: gamezine.co.uk)

At the time it was unclear if the problem was down to his skin color, his body shape, or confusion caused to the motion sensor by his dreadlocked hair. However, players in other tests did not experience problems and Microsoft quickly confirmed that the system would of course be designed to work for players of all races and ethnicities.