Japanese taxi makes use of facial recognition to target riders with ads

In order to target ads more precisely based on the specific person, Japanese firm has made use of facial recognition technology in its taxis that scan people.

Japanese firm recently introduced a new system in its taxi service where a tablet is placed on the seat that scans the person’s face to know about their gender, age and such other traits, and uses the data to target them with relevant ads.

As per Futurism, a QR code in that image links to the website of Japanese e-commerce platform developer DeNA Co Ltd, linking to the ‘Trust & Safety’ page for the company’s ‘Premium Taxi Vision’ service.

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The firm explains that video of passengers is used for generating a passenger profile, such as age, presented gender, number of passengers. The profile gets sent to the advertising agency Geniee, which then send out a relevant advertisement based on the data. The actual footage, as per DeNA, is immediately deleted, ensuring zero user violation.

However, if a person does not wish to have optimized content, there is an option to disable content optimization using the tablet, but is only possible while any one customer in onboard. Content optimization will be reset for the next passenger then.

The company’s Premium Taxi Vision was initially deployed back in January this year and is meant to make ‘riding a taxi more comfortable and convenient’, according to the firm. The taxi vision is based on the concept of ‘providing more fun on taxis and a better travel time’.