#Face mashup software#

Sometimes, one of the pair was a morph photo and the other was one of the contributing faces.

#Face mashup software#

Human participants and smartphone software were asked to decide if a pair of faces matched. The authors of the present study examined the ability of both human viewers and smartphone face recognition software to identify a face morph as distinct from the two faces contributing to the morph. Our research is important in highlighting the potential security problem with this and quantifying the risk of this type of fraud being missed.'

'In recent years we have seen more examples of photo IDs that have been created by morphing two faces together, which can be used as fraudulent ID by both parties. Professor Mike Burton, from the University of York's Department of Psychology, said: 'We use photo ID all the time, not just at borders, and we know that people are not very accurate when matching the photo to the real face. Research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, has shown that both humans and smartphone software are frequently unable to distinguish face morph photos from the two faces contributing to the morph. This involves taking two 'real' face photos and digitally blending them to make a new, but similar, face that both contributing faces can use as false ID. Moving this research forward, the team investigated what the success rate would be like if two faces were morphed together to create a 'new' face.

Previous study at the University has shown that it is difficult to match a pair of unfamiliar faces - a photo of a person, against the real person - presenting significant issues for authorities to spot identity fraud.