Face Recognition automatically confirm faces even should not

[mrmsa_2022]

Application settings:
Automatically assign persons to faces: YES
Automatically confirm faces: NEVER
Consider lifetime: YES

My understanding is that as automatic confirming is set NEVER, IMatch should not confirm faces automatically but it seems to confirm many times faces, to wrong person.
 

[Mario]

When does this happen?
When you manually perform face recognition?
When you assign a person to a face (and IMatch then recclusters existing persons in the background)?
When IMatch imports new files? If so, do your files maybe contain XMP face regions written by another software?

I've did a quick check and as far as I can tell, the auto confirm settings are respected.
I need to learn more about the conditions / workflow where this happens. This was never reported before.

[mrmsa_2022]

When does this happen?
After adding new images to database and IMatch had finished face recognition

When you manually perform face recognition?
This happens in both cases, automatic recognition and manual recognition. There has been multiple cases when I am adding face manually, and IMatch just confirms name straightaway, mostly wrong person. When it goes wrong person, no matter automatically or manually, I have to change name manually afterwards.

When you assign a person to a face (and IMatch then recclusters existing persons in the background)?
This mainly happens background after new photos been added to database, meaning IMatch suggest names automatically. But I've seen this multiple times also when I am adding face manually and IMatch starts to suggest names (meaning it does reads my manual face region suggestion) but suddenly confirm that name for someone, mainly wrong person.

When IMatch imports new files? If so, do your files maybe contain XMP face regions written by another software?
Yes, after files been imported. Files does not contain face regions from any other software, that is my understanding. Can I check this somehow? I do have old pictures, from years ago done by Picasa and those files carries face regions but this issue I am talking is recent (latest from today) and for sure those files has not went trough Picasa as I haven't used that for many years anymore.

I've did a quick check and as far as I can tell, the auto confirm settings are respected.
I need to learn more about the conditions / workflow where this happens. This was never reported before.

Some answers provided above.

[Mario]

You can see if an image contains XMP face regions using the ExifTool Command Processor.
Run the "List metadata" preset and search for region.

The auto confirm setting impacts the background recluster, when IMatch tries to match persons to faces after you have made a change, like assigning a person to a face, changing the assigned person, worked with the Face Manager etc.
It also impacts the automatic face recognition when enabled for images coming new into the database.

This setting is currently not applied in interactive mode, when you work in the Viewer, creating new face annotations manually, adding faces using <F6>.

I don't recall why I did implement this this way. This was over two years ago and was never changed.
I think it just works for the majority of the user base. Or must users just leave the default setting and never use Never, because this of course creates a lot of extra work, having to manually confirm every face.

I shall think about this and read my documentation when there is some time to see why this was implemented this way and if I better change that.

[mrmsa_2022]

This setting is currently not applied in interactive mode, when you work in the Viewer, creating new face annotations manually, adding faces using <F6>.

This is method I do use often, I hit F6 in the Viewer and then add manually region, or sometimes IMatch will make that automatically. In this phase, I do get many times wrong confirms, IMatch confirms face immediately, eventough setting is Never.

[mrmsa_2022]

Or must users just leave the default setting and never use Never, because this of course creates a lot of extra work, having to manually confirm every face.

I do confirm every face manually as I've got so many wrong confirms automatically. I cleaned Persons, near 9000 some weeks ago, it was pretty painful process, and I found lots of wrong confirms.

[Mario]

Check the training faces in the Face Manager for the wrongly confirmed persons.
Unless your images often show identical twins, siblings or very young children, the typical cause for a high wrong assignment rate is false training. Too many trained faces. Not enough variety. 5 to 10 faces is usually all that's needed. Different head positions, different ages.

[mrmsa_2022]

Check the training faces in the Face Manager for the wrongly confirmed persons.
Unless your images often show identical twins, siblings or very young children, the typical cause for a high wrong assignment rate is false training. Too many trained faces. Not enough variety. 5 to 10 faces is usually all that's needed. Different head positions, different ages.

I do all of this and been working with face manager now extensively. I've done all what you said. Does this effect to an original issue, confirming faces even setting is Never?

[Mario]

Does this effect to an original issue, confirming faces even setting is Never?
 

I don't understand.

[mrmsa_2022]

Does this effect to an original issue, confirming faces even setting is Never?
 

I don't understand.

Original problem is that IMatch confirms automatically persons, even it should not (Automatically confirm faces: NEVER ).

How does this help to prevent that issue? "Check the training faces in the Face Manager for the wrongly confirmed persons.
Unless your images often show identical twins, siblings or very young children, the typical cause for a high wrong assignment rate is false training. Too many trained faces. Not enough variety. 5 to 10 faces is usually all that's needed. Different head positions, different ages. "

As I said, I've cleaned all faces and corrected those and variety is less that 10 faces always.

[Mario]

I've decided to apply the auto confirmation setting also when the user interactively creates faces in the Viewer.

I doubt many users will ever see the need to set confirmation to NEVER, though.

Because this generates a lot of extra work!
Not only have you correct wrongly assigned persons (which is more or less common, depending on your collection) but you also have to manually confirm each correct assigned person.

Correcting the occasionally wrongly assigned person is much faster than manually confirm each annotation.

For your other issues: AI sometimes works in strange ways. I have trained and tested the IMatch AI for person recognition on over 400,000 faces and over 2,000 persons in my test suite. It generally works very well. Not even Google, Adobe, Microsoft or Facebook, with all their money, get a recognition rate over, say, 80-90%.

Young children, twins, siblings etc. are very hard to differentiate for AIs these days.
This might improve over time.
Humans have trained recognition faces for 200,000 or 300,000 years...

[mrmsa_2022]

I've decided to apply the auto confirmation setting also when the user interactively creates faces in the Viewer.

Viewer was just an example where that happens, too. Issue started from the background operations, after importing new images. Problem is that IMatch confirms faces even it should not.

[Tveloso]

You should also check that you don't have Rejected Faces for the person whose face IMatch confirms as another incorrect person.  Having Rejected Faces (of other people) for a person, may prevent IMatch from correctly assigning that person's own face.

I removed all rejected faces some time ago, after reading a discussion here in the early days of Face Recognition in IMatch, and my hit rate has been uncannily accurate since.  I'm not sure if this is still needed, but I have stayed from rejecting faces.

My experience now is:

• When IMatch assigns a Confirmed Face it is "always" accurate
• When IMatch assigns an Unconfirmed Face it is almost always accurate

Perhaps you should check in Face Manager if there are rejected faces for the Persons that IMatch is getting wrong...

[Mario]

Good point!

It is highlighted in the help that rejecting faces is the least optional operation.
It is always better to assign the correct person to a face or to delete / ignore the face.

Too many rejected faces for a person may indeed negatively impact the recognition rate.

I may remove the reject feature in a future IMatch version, because it really does not work all to well when users reject to many faces. Another thing I've learned over time.

[Mees Dekker]

Is there a way to find all rejected faces for all people in the database?

[mrmsa_2022]

You should also check that you don't have Rejected Faces for the person whose face IMatch confirms as another incorrect person.  Having Rejected Faces (of other people) for a person, may prevent IMatch from correctly assigning that person's own face.

I have learned from experience not to reject faces unless I am 100% sure about it. Generally, I use the 'reject' option rarely, as I've learned the hard way that it lowers the hit rate.
By the way, the issue I've found is not related to assigning the person; it's related to the system confirming faces automatically even when the settings are set to 'never confirm.'

I don't have any objections to automatic confirmation if the correct person is confirmed, but in my case, that rarely happens.

What I've learned to improve face recognition and prevent issues is to run the "Recluster Persons" option when I see that the system is having difficulties identifying the correct faces.

[Mario]

By the way, the issue I've found is not related to assigning the person; it's related to the system confirming faces automatically even when the settings are set to 'never confirm.'

See my post above on that topic.

[mrmsa_2022]

By the way, the issue I've found is not related to assigning the person; it's related to the system confirming faces automatically even when the settings are set to 'never confirm.'

See my post above on that topic.

I strongly disagree on this matter. When you have a large database, like mine with nearly 9,000 people, it's much easier to manually approve suggested individuals than to go back and correct wrong confirmations afterwards. I don't find the manual confirm function problematic at all. 
I open the person's name in People Manager, highlight the faces I want to confirm, and then press the confirm button. 
This way, I am completely sure that the right faces are assigned to the right person. I feel that you don't understand me, or something else is amiss, but I suggest that you close this "bug."

[Mario]

When you have a large database, like mine with nearly 9,000 people,

Well, that could also explain the sub-standard recognition rate.
Most IMatch users have between 100 and 200 persons in their database.
You have 9,000 persons!

And this means that there will be many more "look alikes" than in normal databases and this will stretch the recognition capabilities of the AI to it's limits.