Devil’s advocate: they don’t need to track demographics, but a “bonus feature” would be to start playing some ad when they detect someone looking at the machine. Not a random leaf or shadow, so it doesn’t start playing annoying ads at random in the background, but an actual face. Or do play a random ad in the background when nobody has looked at the machine in a while.
Of course the temptation of using demographic data to target the ads, could be too big to resist for the company. The temptation of also storing statistical data, might follow.
Well, they did specify that the facial recognition software was there to activate the purchasing interface, rather than to advertise the machine’s contents, so I’m not inclined to cut them some slack if the real motivation was to show adverts to people when they’re claiming it needs to recognise faces because otherwise no one can purchase anything. (Why can’t the purchase interface be activated all the time, rather than requiring sight of a face? Do they think someone other than human beings is going to try to buy something? Is there a widespread problem with squirrels and pigeons buying from vending machines, which requires machines to know when it’s a person trying to buy something?)
Devil’s advocate: they don’t need to track demographics, but a “bonus feature” would be to start playing some ad when they detect someone looking at the machine. Not a random leaf or shadow, so it doesn’t start playing annoying ads at random in the background, but an actual face. Or do play a random ad in the background when nobody has looked at the machine in a while.
Of course the temptation of using demographic data to target the ads, could be too big to resist for the company. The temptation of also storing statistical data, might follow.
Well, they did specify that the facial recognition software was there to activate the purchasing interface, rather than to advertise the machine’s contents, so I’m not inclined to cut them some slack if the real motivation was to show adverts to people when they’re claiming it needs to recognise faces because otherwise no one can purchase anything. (Why can’t the purchase interface be activated all the time, rather than requiring sight of a face? Do they think someone other than human beings is going to try to buy something? Is there a widespread problem with squirrels and pigeons buying from vending machines, which requires machines to know when it’s a person trying to buy something?)