A Russian app that searches a popular social networking site to match faces to smartphone photos is proving increasingly popular in its home country.

Called FindFace, the app was recently highlighted in an art project that used it to match pictures of Moscow subway riders to their profiles on the VKontakte social network. It’s based on facial recognition, and according to The Guardian, boasts of a 70 percent accuracy rate.

In the two months since its launch, FindFace has attracted half a million users and already processed over three million searches, with its makers having implemented a 30-search paywall primarily to prevent their servers from being overwhelmed. But as The Guardian reports, it isn’t just proving popular among the public; there has been considerable government interest as well, with Russian police departments having reached out to its makers, and the Moscow municipal government considering the technology for a CCTV surveillance system.

The app’s makers say they have also seen interest from a Macau casino chain, and plan to market the technology for retail applications as well, tapping into an emerging market for technology that can identify shoppers in real time. While FindFace currently can’t be used with Facebook due to that platform’s image storage protocols, it clearly has a number of other salient applications, in some cases with profound implications.

Source: The Guardian

(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)