What is face recognition?

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Face Recognition

In simple terms, face recognition is the ability of a software application to uniquely identify a person  based on facial characteristics. 

Face recognition goes hand-in-hand with face detection and it should be noted that the two are different. Face detection is simply identifying that there exist a human face in an image. With this in mind, face recognition follows after face detection.

Applications of face recognition

• Security. This is one of the major uses of face recognition. Face recognition is a biometric security to authenticate users e.g in mobile phone or at door locks.
• Criminal identification.
• Healthcare. To access patient's medical records as well as monitor and diagnose diseases.

Many tech companies are using face recognition to enhance their software applications. Facebook uses face recognition to identify people in a post. Google image search uses face recognition to search for a person on the web.