Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | JozJozJoz is on Time.com because of a blog post about her racist camera
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22 Jan JozJozJoz is on Time.com because of a blog post about her racist camera

Posted at 14:34h in asian american by

The facial detection software in Nikon

Wow, someone I know and have dined with was interviewed for a story on Time.com, “Are Face-Detection Cameras Racist?” and the story is also on Yahoo. That’s some bigtime exposure for Joz Wang, who many Asian Americans may know better as JozJozJoz. Way back in May 2009, she blogged about her mom’s new Nikon S630 camera, because its built-in facial detection software kept asking if someone blinked if the subject was Asian.

She wrote a very short post with the above photo, titled “Racist Camera! No, I did not blink… I’m just Asian!,” which was picked up by tech sites like BoingBoing and Gizmodo.

It took nine months and a similar incident where an African American man and a Caucasian woman posted a YouTube video proving that the facial detection software in a fancy new HP computer didn’t recognize black faces, but mainstream media has finally, and suddenly, caught up.

Joz sent out messages today after being featured with her photo and quotes in a Time story by reporter Adam Rose. Not surpisingly, Joz, who’s very active in the AAPI community in Los Angeles and everywhere online (she has her own blog and also contributes to the terrific group site 8Asians), is being deluged with emails and messages from friends near and far.

Congrats, Joz. May your 15 minutes stretch to fill your life!

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