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...HP computers are racist" video went viral, with almost 2 million views, and HP, naturally, was quick to respond. "Everything we do is focused on ensuring that we provide a high-quality experience for all our customers, who are ethnically diverse and live and work around the world," HP's lead social-media strategist Tony Welch wrote on a company blog within a week of the video's posting. "We are working with our partners to learn more." The post linked to instructions on adjusting the camera settings, something both Consumer Reports and Laptop Magazine tested successfully in Web videos...
...Still, some engineers question how a webcam even made it onto the market with this seemingly glaring flaw. "It's surprising HP didn't get this right," says Bill Anderson, president of Oculis Labs in Hunt Valley, Md., a company that develops security software that uses face recognition to protect work computers from prying eyes. "These things are solvable." Case in point: Sensible Vision, which develops the face-recognition security software that comes with some Dell computers, said their software had no trouble picking up the black employee's face when they tested the YouTube video...
YouTube commenters expressed what was on a lot of people's minds. "Seems they rushed the product to market before testing thoroughly enough," wrote one. "I'm guessing it's because all the people who tested the software were white," wrote another. HP declined to comment on their methods for testing the webcam or how involved they were in designing the software, but they did say the software was based on "standard algorithms." Often, the manufacturers of the camera parts will also supply the software to well-known brands, which might explain why HP isn't the only company whose...
...just as the software is only as good as its code and the hardware it lives in, it's also only as good as the light it's got to work with. As HP noted in its blog post, the lighting in the YouTube video was dim, and, the company said, there wasn't enough contrast to pick up the facial shadows the computer needed for seeing. (An overlit person with a fair complexion might have had the same problem.) A better camera wouldn't necessarily have guaranteed a better result, because there's another bottleneck: computing power. The constant...
...these glitches weren't ironed out before the cameras hit Best Buy is not something that HP, Nikon or Sony, when contacted by TIME, were willing to answer. Perhaps in this market of rapidly developing technologies, consumers who fork over a few hundred dollars for the latest gadget are the test market. A few years ago, speech-recognition software was teeth-gnashingly unreliable. Today, it's up to 99% accurate. With the flurry of consumer complaints out there, most of the companies seem to be responding. HP has offered instructions on how to adjust its webcam's sensitivity to backlighting...