Adidas to use facial recognition system to target customers
It has been revealed that Adidas is to use police facial recognition systems, modified by Intel, to identify a person’s age and advertise the product most relevant to them.
The sportswear company has said that it will be trialling the system in both American and British shops.
Adidas will use the facial recognition ‘smart eyes’ in street hoardings and on shopping centre screens to estimate a shopper’s age, gender and tastes. It ‘reads’ each person passing within 20ft of advert and sends details of height, length of nose and hair, and distance between eyes to a server that calculates their age to within 5 years.
From this information, what they are most likely to buy is assessed and the advert onscreen is changed to suit this. It was said that two thirds of products shown will directly target the individual, but last third remain random so people don’t feel manipulated. The last third will also allow for the shopper buying a product for someone else.
It was also reported that Kraft foods is talking to supermarkets about fitting ‘smart eyes’ to freezer cabinets and kiosks.