Tech & Biz

'Racist Webcam': HP Webcam Ignores Black Faces: Wanda and Desi

by Jordan Yerman | December 21, 2009 at 03:07 pm

1969 views | 12 Recommendations | 3 comments

A video posted to Youtube by a user called wzamen01 (Wanda) entitled "HP computers are racist" demonstrates how the HP face-tracking webcam on the MediaSmart Computer does not track a black man's face, as demonstrated by Desi, her co-worker. So, is this a racist webcam?

Wanda and Desi demonstrate how differently the webcam behaves when presented with a white or black face; says Desi, "I think my blackness interferes with the computer's ability to follow me".

Listen, HP, this is the 21st century. Obama is in the White House. This needs to be fixed STAT.

HP denies that its computers or webcams are racist, or that it made any qualitative decisions on race when designing its webcams. Desi has a definite tone of humor in his voice, so he's probably thinking "software flaw" as well. However, I have to wonder out loud how the hell this bug slipped past QA: a face-tracking webcam that can't track faces is not a face-tracking webcam. At any rate, HP's reps found out about the video and went into damage control right away:

The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is probably happy to be out of the hot seat after its own racism issue, stemming from some ill-advised Photoshop.

By the way Desi is leaned over, I think this is a webcam built into a laptop; either that, or he's really, really tall. Also, Wanda has the whitest, cleanest teeth I have ever, ever seen.

1 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

everchanging

at 23:02 on December 21st, 2009

Most interesting crazy, funny and sad. Can anyone say oops with a check and get HP's IT department to fix it and send out a update.

John G (not verified)

at 22:22 on December 22nd, 2009

The webcam wasn't racist. It was probably just afraid of Black Desi. How was the poor webcam to know that Black Desi wasn't going to pull out a gun or a knife and do violence to it? This black on electronics violence has got to stop!