On one hand, Facebook’s facial-recognition software makes tagging people in photos easier, makes gathering your friends closer to you a snap.
Look! It knows that’s Tom! Hey, it tagged Pat and Kyle and I didn’t have to do a thing!
On the other hand, when the artificial intelligence is more artificial than intelligent, it’s at best humorous and at worst insulting.
Every now and then, I get a notification that one friend or another — or, more amusingly, someone who turns out to be a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend — has included me in a post. Sometimes I’m tipped that they’ve included a photo of me. Which, at six degrees of separation or more, seems an odd thing for that person to do.
Except the image is not of me.
As of this writing, FB has 21 images of #45 that FB’s AI has tagged “Bill Zapcic.” Here’s an example:
Maybe it’s the bags under his eyes, or the squint; I, alas, have them too.
Nose? Pursed lips? Dunno.
Last I looked, I have whiskers and bluer eyes. When I smile, it’s not a stage direction on the TelePrompTer.
And what goes around doesn’t seem to come around. When Charles Apple posted a photo of me on my birthday (thank you, Chas!), FB AI didn’t tag it as #45.
Must be the Deep State, or the Secret Service.
