High-Tech Face Scanning Vending Machine Foiled by Bruce Willis (photo)

4,000 cigarette vending machines have been kitted out with age verification technology in Osaka, Japan. The facial recognition software installed into the machines has the ability to detect whether cigarette purchases are of legal smoking age. It’s designed to scan customers’ faces for signs of wrinkles, sagging skin and other signs of age.

Facial characteristics are compared with images in a database of over 100,000 people, and if the machine deems the customer to be well over 20 years old (Japan’s legal age for smoking), it will complete the sale. Fujitaka, the vending machines’ creator, has claimed that the technology is 90% accurate.

However, as Techdirt notes, there’s a reason that face-scanning technology was given up by scientists attempting to create new security measures following the September 11th attacks – it just doesn’t work! This has been demonstrated by a reporter for Sankei Sports who discovered how easily the high-tech machines could be fooled just by holding up magazines before the sensors. Judging from this, the software cannot even detect whether input is two- or three-dimensional. Understandably, this has somewhat diminished its capabilities in fulfilling the task for which it was created.

The reporter tested several types of image, including a six-inch headshot of Bruce Willis and a three-inch picture of a female celebrity in her thirties. Both trials were successful. He also attempted to purchase cigarettes using an inch-wide photograph, but this was rejected.

The system was created in response to the dubious success of the RFID readers that require the insertion of the consumer’s Taspo age-verification card. This hasn’t proven to work very well: last month, a man attached his own Taspo card to his vending machine to try to encourage consumers unwilling to use their own cards back into his custom. He also attached a note to the machine that read ‘This is a Taspo ID card exclusively for this vending machine. Minors are not supposed to use the card.’

A spokesperson for the Tobacco Institute of Japan said: “It is an act that erodes the age-verifying system and the public’s confidence in the tobacco industry.” In any case, it looks like it’s back to the drawing boards for Fujitaka. Perhaps the next models will actually be able to perceive depth and they’ll learn from these humiliating mistakes.

Maybe the next time Bruce Willis tries to purchase vending machines cigarettes in Japan, he’ll be disappointed.