UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned women

Re:UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned... by mschuster91 on Thursday October 08, 2020 @02:48AM (#24716530)

> Dark-skinned women are told their photos are poor quality 22% of the time, while the figure for light-skinned women is 14%

That doesn't surprise me even a tiny bit, given that the problem will already present itself in the camera - exposure settings are calibrated for white-ish people, and automated photo booths don't have a human to correct it or offer multiple different exposures to the user. Scanning the photo has the same problem.

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Re:UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned... by fogihujy on Thursday October 08, 2020 @02:53AM (#24716569)

There is definitely something to be said about the quality of pictures taken in photo booths, but the study specifically used pictures that were all of sufficiently high quality:

> Photos of politicians were collected from parliaments around the world. The gender and skin tone were recorded for each photo using the Fitzpatrick skin-tone scale. Each image met the Home Office standards for a passport photo.

That definitely suggests the software used for automatic image quality check simply isn't up to par.

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Re:UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned... by jmkd on Thursday October 08, 2020 @05:30AM (#24717423)

While this sounds plausible - yet simply shifts the blame for the bias elsewhere in the technology supply chain - it does not adequately explain the experience of Elaine Owusu cited in the article.

Her photo shows a clear-as-day mouth closed, which was repeatedly interpreted by the system as mouth open.

No exposure settings would change that outcome.

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