Quick Summary
Google is enhancing the Familiar Faces function of its doorbell by recognising other things about the people at your door.
This will include clothing and body size to help determine who that person is.
Google was one of the first to offer face detection on its Nest cameras in 2017. The popular feature came to Nest Hello (Google's doorbell) and was pretty unique until Amazon started offering Familiar Faces too, more recently.
Google is expanding the skills that Google Home offers, and included in that is more advanced Familiar Faces functionality. This includes additional markers to help identify who is at the door.
For those paying for the Advanced plan, that will now also use clothing to help identify a person when their facial details aren't visible. The expansion is outlined in the release notes for Google Home, while a greater explanation is given on the Familiar Faces page.
Google says: "We also use additional non-biometric signals (body size, clothing colour, etc.) to help make Familiar Faces work better when a subject's face is not visible."
Familiar Faces works by asking the user if they recognise a face and allowing them to store those faces that they do know. This allows for identification of frequent visitors, so they can be announced to the homeowner when they come to the door.
The expansion should mean that the camera can recognise people when their face is covered. Whether it will be able to recognise people in fancy dress will take some testing, but it's likely to be designed to add peace of mind for those relying on the service but find it less effective in some conditions – for example in bad weather.
This isn't the only way that Google identifies clothing: the company also recently added the identification of clothing in an outfit to Circle to Search, the idea being that you then go on to buy those things.
Beyond that, Google also offers Google Photos Wardrobe, where it will recognise clothing that you own to help you piece together a new outfit and try them on virtually.
However, features like Familiar Faces raise a number of privacy concerns, surrounding the lack of consent for those who have their faces captured and stored digitally. Indeed, that's seen Amazon facing a class action lawsuit as a result.
While clever AI features might sound great, privacy remains a big problem, with the UK government outlining that using security cameras that capture those outside your property would see the owner bound by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).
