San Francisco bar scene now features application to guess gender and age of user
A new mobile app has just been launched that will allow the faces of bar-goers in 25 locations across the city to have their faces scanned in order to determine their gender and age.
Customers with the app on their smartphones can then obtain real-time updates about the bars across the city.
It will provide them with information regarding the size of the crowds at various bars, as well as the ration of men to women, so that they can choose whether or not a given place is providing the type of environment they were hoping to experience.
The application is called SceneTap, and was created by a company based in Austin, Texas.
That company explained that information specific to identifying the individuals is neither collected nor saved. Instead, it is simply meant to help to help patrons to gauge the bar scene before they choose the location they’d like to attend.
However, even before the scanning cameras were turned on in the participating bars, there has been some expression of discontent by patrons who – in the tradition of the city which is known for its love of civil liberties and its hopping nightlife – have said that they will boycott any of the SceneTap participating venues.
The service is based on the latest technology trends for biometrics. A camera positioned at the door of a bar takes a picture of the individuals entering and uses software to map each individual’s facial features onto a grid. By using various distances on the face, for example, the length of the space between the eyes and ears or between the eyes, the algorithms in the software can then use a databases for various genders and ages in order to match those of that individual and guess where he or she may fit.
According to the CEO of SceneTap, Cole Harper, there is no invasion of privacy by these technology trends, as the only collected and stored data is the guess of gender and age as well as the time of arrival. No measurements or images remain stored.
