By Ry Crist, September 9, 2019 5:00 AM PDT
It's no longer just always-listening microphones -- Google's new Nest Hub Max smart display adds a camera that's always scanning for faces.
Google Home and Nest Hub gadgets already feature microphones that are always listening for the words that wake up the Assistant ("OK, Google" or "Hey, Google"). Now, the search giant's newest gadget for your home, the Nest Hub Max smart display, adds in a camera that's always watching for a familiar face.
Google calls the feature Face Match, and it uses facial recognition technology to remember what you look like. After that, you can tap on the screen to see personalized bits of data like calendar appointments and Google Duo messages whenever it recognizes you.
The Nest Hub Max isn't the first product to bring facial recognition technology -- and the legal and ethical considerations that come with it -- into people's homes. Smart phones have been using the technology to let us unlock our devices and authorize purchases for years, and a growing number of smart home gadgets that use cameras are putting it to use, too, including Google's own Nest Hello video doorbell.
Still, it's a product that seeks to give Google a wider window into our lives at a time when the company is already facing questions about the way it handles our personal data. I wanted to take a closer look at how those privacy standards apply when you add always-watching cameras into the mix. (Here's even more about facial recognition in everyday technology and how to opt out.)
How private is that camera feed?
You'll start with Face Match by using your phone to scan your face, which creates a "face model" that the device attaches to your user profile. After that, when you're in front of the device and it recognizes you, you'll see personalized details like calendar appointments and Google Duo video messages from your contacts.
I had a lot of questions for Google about this feature, and about the camera's ability to spot a raised hand gesture in order to pause or resume playback, too. For instance: Is the camera always recording in order to process what it sees and spot familiar faces or gestures? Is it sharing everything it sees with Google's cloud?
"If camera sensing is enabled and the camera is on (i.e., not turned off via the hardware or software switch), then the camera is continuously processing pixels to look for faces and/or gestures," a Google spokesperson explained. "This processing is done locally on the device, and no pixels leave the Nest Hub Max."
You can also use the camera in the Nest Hub Max like a Nest Cam security camera, and view its feed at any time via Android TV or via the Google Home or Nest apps. If you'd like, you can subscribe to Nest Aware, a service that saves motion-activated video clips to a cloud account for you to review later. All of that -- watching the feed remotely and storing clips recorded from it -- involves uploading footage to Google's servers.
"When you are using your Nest Hub Max as a Nest Cam, and any other time when video or images are being uploaded to Google (for example, during a video call), you'll see the green light at the top of the device," the spokesperson said. "If you have subscribed to Nest Aware for your Hub Max, your stored recordings from the Nest Cam feature will be available for you to review and delete any time in the Nest app."
Google adds that neither the face and gesture tracking data nor the Nest Cam data is ever used for ad personalization, the company's process of using the data people share with it in order to target advertisements at them that are relevant to their perceived interests.
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Originally Posted by Zippyjuan
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