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Google appears to be adding support for facial recognition unlock in Chrome OS

Logging into your Chromebook is pretty easy since it shares the same password as your Google account, but that’s a pretty slow process compared to our phones or even some other platforms. Now, it looks like Google is adding facial recognition support to Chrome OS.

According to a commit first spotted by Chrome Story, Google is currently in the process of opening up support for facial recognition within the Chrome OS platform. This would allow users to log into their Chromebooks simply by letting the machine scan their face rather than typing in a long password. The commit follows:

intel: ipu3:

Add face detection
The face detection works if set the mode to FD_MODE_FULL.

The face info could be got by method getResult().
It’s disabled currently. Add metadata and enable it in the future.

Before anyone gets too excited, though, this isn’t something Google is implementing across the board. Rather, this support would require specialized hardware in order to work. So, in short, no current Chromebooks will be able to do this. There’s mention of using Intel’s Face Engine which could end up powering this feature. With other platforms such as Windows embracing other methods of unlocking, it’s good to see Google is looking forward with Chrome OS. Hopefully, fingerprint sensors will work soon too.

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