Tokyo, Japan - October 3, 2019 - NEC Corporation, a leader in the
integration of IT and network technologies, today announced that its face recognition technology achieved the highest matching accuracy in
the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2018 (*1) performed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with an
error rate of 0.5% when registering 12 million people (*2).
NEC's technology ranked No. 1 in NIST testing for the fifth time, following its top placement in the face recognition testing for video in
2017. The high performance of NEC's technology is reflected in the test results which placed the company significantly ahead of the
runner-up.
In recent years, the growing convenience of biometric authentication technology, improved security awareness, and the remarkable
development of artificial intelligence (AI), have driven companies around the world to begin adopting biometric authentication technology.
Specifically, the use of face recognition technology is rapidly expanding across a wide range of fields throughout the world. Face
recognition technologies are now being used in areas that require high reliability, convenience and long-term use, such as identity
verification and national infrastructure, transaction settlements, bank account establishment, and passport verification.
49 organizations, including companies from the United States, China, Russia, Europe, and Japan, participated in the NIST's FRVT 2018,
where the evaluation of face recognition accuracy was performed. These tests are the most rigorous and fair benchmarks implemented by the
NIST as each organization is required to submit and be evaluated on programs that were developed during the same period. By performing
multi-stage matching, an impressive search speed of 230 million matchings per second was achieved. Furthermore, leveraging NEC's deep
learning methods to significantly reduce the identification error rate, NEC accurately matched images of a subject taken over a 10 year
interval with an error rate that was 4 times lower than the runner-up.
Going forward, NEC aims to further expand the scope of this technology's application to include store transaction settlements, services in
public facilities, such as buses, railways, airports, city offices, and hospitals; and helping to protect and care for children and the
elderly. Based on the NEC Group AI and Human Rights Principles established in April of this year (*3), NEC gives top priority to the
consideration of privacy and respect for human rights when using AI and biometric data. NEC also aims to contribute to further
improvements in the usability of biometric identification and video analytics technology, including face recognition.
"NEC's portfolio of biometric identification solutions, 'Bio-IDiom' (*4), which includes face recognition technology, is critical to the
ways that NEC is helping to build safer and more productive societies as part of the 'NEC Value Chain Innovation'," said Hitoshi Imaoka,
NEC Fellow at NEC Corporation. "These technologies create new value by sharing information on the status of communities, things, and
processes across the entire value chain, and are a meaningful source of growth in our Mid-term Management Plan 2020 and 'NEC Safer
Cities' (*5), which support the realization of safe, secure, efficient, and equal cities."
Notes:
(*1) The Face Recognition Vendor Test 2018 (FRVT 2018), sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security and others, assessed the
accuracy and speed of authentication for tens of millions of people using face recognition technologies from top vendors from throughout
the world.
www.nist.gov/programs-projects/frvt-1n-identification
(*2) Patrick Grother, Mei Ngan, Kayee Hanaoka, Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), NIST Interagency Report 8271(2019/09/11)
www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2019/09/11/nistir_8271_20190911.pdf
(*3) NEC Unveils "NEC Group AI and Human Rights Principles"
www.nec.com/en/press/201904/global_20190402_01.html
(*4) Bio-IDiom
www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/biometrics/index.html
(*5) NEC Safer Cities
www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/safercities/index.html
About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. The NEC
Group globally provides "Solutions for Society" that promote the safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company's
corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social
value for the changing world of tomorrow. For more information, visit NEC at www.nec.com.
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