Google appears to be paying parents for videos of their children, as long as they are between the ages of 13 and 17, so that it can study their skin color and the shape of their eyelids. The information comes from 404 Media. The news agency cited a website called the “Facial Video Data Collection Project” run by the Canadian company TELUS. The company in question offers $50 for short videos of children, which it then passes on to Google. The page was online last Wednesday and now says that the form is closed for new applications.
The project ran from November 2023 to January 2024 and its purpose was to improve facial recognition technology. “Participants will be asked to take 11 short videos of themselves, wearing different props (eg sunglasses, face masks, hats) or without props,” reads the project summary. “Each video will be less than 40 seconds long.” A Telus dispatcher would be on call while the child was taking those videos, according to the page.
Children’s parents would have to give consent to Google and Telus to collect children’s biometrics, including eye shape, skin color and facial geometry. Google will keep the data for 5 years, according to the page. According to the submissions page, the purpose for collecting the videos is “To obtain data for training a machine learning model” for Google products. With the videos, the machine learning model will be able to train itself, when it receives the right data. In this case, the children’s images and videos will be used to teach Google’s software to better recognize people’s race, age, and identity.
Google confirmed to 404 Media that it is “exploring ways to help our users verify their age” and that contractors like Telus are helping it create more diverse datasets.
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