Associated Incidents
A New Zealand man of Asian descent had his passport photo rejected when facial recognition software registered his eyes as being closed.
Richard Lee was trying to renew his passport so he could return to Australia from New Zealand after Christmas, but was blocked after he submitted the picture to an online passport photo checker run by NZ's department of internal affairs.
The automated system told the 22-year-old engineering student the photo was invalid because his eyes were closed, even though they were clearly open, according to a copy of the notification which was posted to Facebook by his friends.
However the young DJ, currently studying Aerospace Engineering and Business management in Melbourne, could see the lighter side.
"No hard feelings on my part, I've always had very small eyes and facial recognition technology is relatively new and unsophisticated," Mr Lee said.
"It was a robot, no hard feelings. I got my passport renewed in the end."
Up to 20 percent of passport photos submitted online are rejected for various reasons, an Internal Affairs spokesman said.
"The most common error is a subject's eyes being closed and that was the generic error message sent in this case," he said.
The lighting in Lee's first photo was uneven but a later one was accepted.
After his friends posted an image of the bungle to Facebook, social media users started suggesting the machine was racist.
"Technology is getting racist," one user wrote.
"Dude, his eyes are clearly open,” another posted.