A Passport Robot Told An Applicant Of Asian Descent To Open Their Eyes

A New Zealander of Asian descent had his passport photograph rejected when the facial recognition software thought his eyes were closed.

Reuters reports the system sent an error message when it decided Richard Lee’s eyes were closed, despite them being clearly open. He was attempting to renew his passport at the time.

The 22-year-old engineering student was told by the automated system that the photo he provided was invalid because it thought his eyes were shut. “It was a robot, no hard feelings,” Mr Lee said. “I got my passport renewed in the end.”

An Internal Affairs spokesman said about 20 per cent of passport photos submitted online are rejected for various reasons. “The most common error is a subject’s eyes being closed and that was the generic error message sent in this case,” he said.

Mr Lee told Reuters there’s no hard feelings on his part. “I’ve always had very small eyes and facial recognition technology is relatively new and unsophisticated.” The lighting in his first photo was deemed “uneven”, but a later one he uploaded was accepted.

When Lee shared the error message to Facebook, some commenters called out the machine for being racist. “Oh wtf! Racist much! Lol,” one person wrote.

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