Facial recognition

Facial recognition firms are scrambling to see around face masks

Some companies assert that their technology isn't affected by masks, and that artificial intelligence can still detect and identify people with a high accuracy rate, even when half the face is covered. 

A public beta program for Apple's latest iOS release showed that the tech giant is updating its Face ID to account for people wearing masks. Google didn't respond to a request for comment on whether it's doing the same with Android.

Experts on facial recognition are skeptical about claims that the technology isn't fazed by masks. After all, even without masks, facial recognition can stumble -- studies have found that the majority of facial recognition algorithms had a higher rate of false positives for people of color by a factor of "10 to 100 times."

And because of the pandemic, these algorithms can't be properly tested with face masks by the US' National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, which many consider the leading authority on facial recognition accuracy rates.