Google denies planning face recognition app

It was CNN which first sparked the speculations that Google is working on its very own face recognition app – as in, take a picture of someone on your phone, and have their Google profile pulled up. Whoa stalker-ish!

The CNN report quotes Hartmut Neven, Google’s engineering director for image-recognition development, saying:

“We recognise that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues.”

But later Google claimed the story to be inaccurate, CNET writes, issuing a denial and calling the CNN story “speculative”:

“We are in fact not working on developing an app with these capabilities.”

We’ll have to wait and see what happens, but the worst case scenario is less than pleasant. Google’s Goggles tool already recognises images in the form of text, book covers, artwork, landmarks and bar codes, for which users can then run a search. No faces yet though – but if / when it comes, we’ll be looking for the opt-out button.