Still a few bugs in the system

It seems the face-recognition technology used to verify the age of cigarette vending-machine users in Japan still has a few bugs.

The facial recognition problem is hard, and trying to use specific features to estimate age for a generic face is even harder. Then ruling out doctored photos, makeup tricks, etc., and it gets exponentially harder.

So kudos for trying, and it's not surprising there are problems. I'm just surprised it's being deployed at this stage.

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]