Face masks are already known to stop the spread of coronavirus. Apparently, they can also make it much harder for facial-recognition software to identify you, too.

Finding ways around the problem There are currently no usable photo data sets of mask-wearing people that can be used to train and evaluate facial recognition systems.

Later, it will invite companies to submit new algorithms tuned for face masks. But Grother says the timing of the project is uncertain, because NIST has reduced staffing due to the Covid-19 crisis.

(Image courtesy NIST report, titled “Ongoing Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 6A: Face recognition accuracy with masks using pre-COVID-19 algorithms”) The results were about what you would ...

A new study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has tested how accurate commercial facial recognition algorithms are at identifying people wearing protective face masks ...

Mask detector running on a Jetson Nano 2GB using AlwaysAI toolkit for transfer learning on a face detection network -- showing a correctly-detected masked face.

Its report, published in July, found some algorithms struggled to correctly identify mask-wearing individuals up to 50% of the time.