iPhone X Refund: Apple Pays Up After Face ID Can't Tell Chinese Women Apart
Apple refunded the iPhone X purchase of a woman from China. Her device's Face ID recognition feature failed her on more than one instance when it couldn't distinguish her and her friend's face.
The woman, known only as Yan, had her first iPhone X replaced at an Apple store when her friend was able to easily unlock the device using the Face ID feature. Initially, the Apple staff did not believe her claim when she called about the problem, so she and her friend went in person to an Apple store. The sales staff thought that the phone unit had a problematic camera, so they gave her another iPhone X.
Unfortunately, Yan's friend was still able to unlock this second device via Face ID again. The Apple store had no other recourse except to give Yan a refund, as per South China Morning Post.
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Some users doubt the accuracy and security of the Apple Face ID recognition software. They believe that there's a strong probability the feature won't work perfectly with identical twins and Apple acknowledged this.
"Face ID learns who you are and it adapts to you as your face changes over time," the company's product marketing Phil Schiller said. "Of course, the statistics are lowered if that person shares a close genetic relationship with you."
The Chinese woman's case, however, also brought to light an issue with racism. Apple promised before the iPhone X came out that it will not have the same problems that Google encountered with its artificially intelligent facial recognition software. In 2015, Google's AI couldn't properly identify people with dark skin and lumped some images of African American individuals as gorillas.
"We worked with participants from around the world to include a representative group of people accounting for gender, age, ethnicity, and other factors," Apple's Vice-President Cynthia Hogan stated in developing the Face ID. "We augmented the studies as needed to provide a high degree of accuracy for a diverse range of users."
The iPhone X hit the market in November and sold out within minutes of its release.
