Face-Matching Technology!

Here's Everything You Need to Know

Face-Matching is a game-changing technology. This technology 1) automatically tags candid photos with student names, 2) allows search of all photos for students by name, and 3) provides detailed coverage reports with detail on student placement in the book.

This feature will save a lot of time for yearbook staff, and if fully utilized can improve the value of the yearbook for everyone! Read on to learn how.

Here's How It Works

1. Once Portraits have been uploaded for each school, Pixami's Face Matching technology will automatically start up on the server, in the background.

2. The Face Matching technology analyzes the face in each student portrait, creates a database of unique facial characteristics, and associates the data for each face with the name already provided.

3. The software then analyzes all candid photos using this database.

4. In multiple places in the software, it will display the name for each matched face that's located in a candid photo.

That's all there is to it!

Here Are Some Key Benefits

• Pixami's Face-Matching technology will save lots of time (and mistakes) over the traditional, manual process of identifying and naming students.
• It will allow you to search all photos for a student by name, which is a huge time saver. And when looking at student candid photos, you will almost always know who is in the photo, automatically.
• The Coverage Report feature will allow you to view the students that are most represented, and least represented in the yearbook, and make adjustments. You can use this data to ensure 'student' equity', or equal representation, in the yearbook. 
• You can even use this technology as part of your sales efforts by, for example, committing to parents that every student will be represented exactly 3 times.
• Or, cross-reference student data with sales data, making sure everyone knows they're in the yearbook, and making sure those who are most represented have purchased.

This feature really is a game-changer, and we look forward to your input, ideas and feedback. 

Handling Privacy Concerns or Objections

'AI' is a hot topic in the news these days, and as such we expect that we may have school or parent concerns about Pixami's use of this technology. Below are some important points that we hope will address any concerns.  Please feel free to share and comment on this article.

• Pixami's Face-Matching technology only uses name and photo data that has already been provided, for the purpose of saving time and improving accuracy.
• This technology replaces an existing manual process that required a software user to type the names of each student to each candid photo. This technology accomplishes the exactly same thing - except automatically and with more accuracy.
  
• This technology is internal to the yearbook software, and subject to the same thorough and strict privacy policy that already exists for user data. It’s hosted with the Pixami software in a secure, state-of-the-art environment at Amazon (AWS).
  
• This technology is already used daily by nearly everyone: it’s embedded in most mobile devices, numerous photo and related apps, search engines, and most social media.
  
• Pixami’s implementation of this technology is based on code that’s been utilized and proven in mass market school software products, including by PicID in the school ID space. It has been thoroughly tested for accuracy, performance and security. 
  
• Pixami is one of the first to offer this technology to the yearbook market, but we anticipate this technology will be universal in the marketplace in the future. We'll strive to keep our level of functionality, privacy and security at the forefront for our customers and their schools.

Other Things to Know

• Face-matching is now inherent in all Pixami yearbook and directory publishing products. 
• Face matching is processor intensive and will run overnight, beginning when portraits have been uploaded. It will not run constantly or on-demand.
• Once Portraits have been uploaded and the technology begins running, you will see the names appear in several locations for your candid photos. New candids will be processed as they are added.
• This is a server-intensive process. Therefore, the more Candid images on the server for your school, the longer it will take to process them.
  
  Pixami has always promoted the best practice of organizing your photos offline initially, and then uploading the final yearbook candidates to the software. This practice will improve face-matching performance.
  
  For your planning purposes, the 'typical' yearbook contains 1000 candid photos, with 3000 uploaded. Understanding every school has different needs, we recommend this as a basic guideline for best face-matching performance.

Final Statement

We hope this information helps to clarify Pixami's use of the technology -- that it's limited to only within the yearbook software, using only student and staff data that's already been provided., and only for the purpose of auto-naming student photos -- all within a secure, state-of-the-art environment. Our goal is to make sure our schools and their parents understand the benefits of Pixami's implementation, and how it differs from some other uses of AI technology that are currently (rightly so in many cases) receiving negative press.

Pixami carefully implemented this technology to provide only massive time benefits our customers and their schools, and there are no negatives of our specific implementation. We'll continue to update here, and glad to have a discussion about AI with any customers. We will also disable this technology immediately for any customer upon request.

Finally, Here's a Quote We Like

“AI in a yearbook layout system is a game-changer. Knowing who is in each picture gives Pixami a huge functional advantage, streamlining mundane tasks while enabling features that would be otherwise impossible. It’s like adding spell-checking, Table of Contents generation, and predictive text to a word processor -- groundbreaking. Pixami has made a bold, strategic move that is going to turn heads.”

- Michael Sheasby, Jalea Technology & High5.ID