Is HP and Their Cameras Racist?

Brennen Jones, Featured By Brennen Jones on January 3, 2010 at 9:32 am

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Hewitt Packard developed a facial recognition program that’s supposed to track your facial expressions and movements.  The camera pans, tilts, and even zooms based on the positioning of your face within the frame.    Sounds freakin’ awesome, doesn’t it?  This is the kind of software that would be ideal for web cam conversations.   Most web cams are in static positions which at times could make for the conversations to get boring.  With this new software, it allows for better conversations and allows for each user to be more animated and to be more themselves because the camera will capture it all.

This software could also be ideal for video conferences.  This software would also be ideal for video surveillance.  Can you imagine being a mom and pop store owner and being able to afford some high tech software such as this that would be able to capture multiple angles of your customers as they come in your store?  The possibilities are endless and Hewitt Packard seems to have another hit on their hands.

But there’s one major problem with this product offering.

In my Kanye voice, “Hewitt Packard doesn’t like Black People…”

As this extremely hilarious video explains, the camera simply doesn’t like Black people and that’s clearly demonstrated between the Black guy (Desi) on the vid and his white co-worker friend (Wanda).

This video has created an uproar surrounding Hewitt Packard and their practices.   They even explained that the reason behind the gaffe is because the camera doesn’t recognize subjects who have “insufficient foreground lighting.”  That’s a new one.  I guess I can add this to me being a person born with “insufficient foreground lighting” along with me being Black/African-American.

But this is definitely a funny issue, because a lot of Black people are taking issue with this camera.  Just like Black people to complain.  We finally got a camera that won’t follow us around and we complain.

What do you guys think about the issue?  Is HP racist or is this just a glitch?  Just sound off below.