Due to the threat of the coronavirus, the number of "masked people" has grown. Sberbank and VisionLabs (part of the bank's ecosystem) found out in their research whether medical masks can affect safety and facial recognition, especially in large cities. The Rambler portal (part of the bank's ecosystem) conducted a survey on the attitude of Russians to medical masks from 5 to 10 March 2020:
- only 3% of respondents reported that they constantly use this tool to prevent infection with viruses, - 9% of respondents do it sometimes or during illness, - 88% do not use masks at all.
Alexander Khanin, founder and chairman of the board of VisionLabs, quoted in the bank's message “Our products can recognize a face even when wearing a medical mask. We at VisionLabs introduced this function into our product back in 2018 and have implemented more than 20 projects in Southeast Asia and Japan, where a mask on a person's face is the norm of everyday life. Of course, a medical mask complicates the task of recognition, but we have learned to identify with high accuracy faces with a false mustache or beard, glasses, scarf, hat, medical mask or other accessories. During recognition, our algorithms take into account a large number of facial features. Partial facial overlaps will affect some of them, but the algorithm will continue to work stably in the remaining visible signs."