A black woman looking to renew her passport has had her picture rejected as the online facial recognition technology confused her lips for an open mouth.
Elaine Babey submitted a photo on the gov.uk website, and was baffled after it was rejected.
She posted a photo on Twitter , writing: “British passport system violated man said my mouth is open the digital system can’t process my these lips.”
Despite the fact that her lips are clearly closed in the image, a message on the website explained: “Your photo doesn’t meet all the rules and is unlikely to be suitable for a new passport.
“It looks like your mouth is open.”
While Ms Babey managed to laugh off the issue, several Twitter users replied, claiming the passport checker is ‘racist.’
One user wrote: “The issue of AI. It is inherently biased against people of colour.”
Another added: “Facial recognition software is trained on a small subset of population, it’s a huge problem and demonstrates inherent racism baked into tech industry.”
And one joked: “Need a white person with lip fillers to upload their photo to see what happens.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that someone has struggled to get their features accepted by the technology.
Last year, Joshua Bada, 28, from west London, also had his photo rejected as the technology thought his mouth was open.
Speaking at the time, The Race Equality Foundation said it believed the system had not been tested properly to see if it would actually work for black or ethnic minority people, calling it "technological or digital racism".
"Presumably there was a process behind developing this type of technology which did not address issues of race ethnicity and as a result it disadvantages black and minority ethnic people," Samir Jeraj, the charity's policy and practice officer, commented.
Sadly, a freedom information request by MedConfidential has since shown that the Home Office knew its technology failed for some ethnic groups, but continued to use it.
The documents, which were released following a Freedom of Information request by MedConfidential, wrote: “User research was carried out with a wide range of ethnic groups and did identify that people with very light or very dark skin found it difficult to provide an acceptable passport photograph.
“However; the overall performance was judged sufficient to deploy.”
Following the report, the government claims that it is conducting further research ‘to ensure that users from different ethnicities can follow the photo guidance and provide a photo that passes the photo checks.'
Speaking to New Scientist, a spokesperson added: “We are determined to make the experience of uploading a digital photograph as simple as possible, and will continue working to improve this process for all of our customers.”
