The end of anonymity? Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers with 70 per cent accuracy

In The Dark Knight reboot of the Batman cinematic franchise, the Caped Crusader is able to locate any of Gotham’s denizens on a whim, by hijacking the microphones and cameras on their cellphones. FindFace, the identification app created by Alexander Kabakov, 29, and Artem Kukharenko, 26, is not quite as powerful as Christopher Nolan’s Orwellian tool. But the Russian developers say their facial recognition software could be used by authorities to fight crime - and, just as easily, score dates with attractive strangers.

Or, at least, score the attractive strangers’ names.

FindFace can identify random passersby with about 70 per cent accuracy, given two conditions: You need a photo of them, and they need to have a social media profile.

“If you see someone you like, you can photograph them, find their identity, and then send them a friend request,” Kabakov told the Guardian in an interview on Tuesday. Alternatively, he said, you can run a photo of an ex or celebrity through the programme, and FindFace will spit out the social media profiles of similar-looking people.

FindFace marries a powerful facial-recognition algorithm to a popular social media website, VK. Previously known as VKontakte, VK is the dominant social network in eastern Europe, especially among those who speak Russian. The “Russian Facebook” boasts some 200 million accounts, and Vk.com is the third most visited website in Russia, according to website ranker Alexa. The individuals being identified must have a VK account, as FindFace is not currently compatible with the way Facebook inventories its images.

The algorithm comes from Moscow-based NTechLab, which recently boasted it bested Google’s recognition software at MegaFace, a technical challenge hosted by the University of Washington. Scanning 1 million faces, the NTechLab correctly identified 73 per cent of people in the set. NTechLab’s software, like many facial recognition systems, uses an artificial neural network - a system that apes the biological connections between neurons to efficiently perform a task.