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Design

Digital Ads That Can Tell Your Age, Sex, and Ethnicity

They’re being trialled in Tokyo, right now.

We’ve already covered gesture controlled technology, and now for your futuristic delectation: digital billboards that can scan passers-by. For better or worse, they've been getting trialled in Tokyo—the city that always seems to be living an entire millennium in front of everyone else—since the summer. Like the world isn’t confusing enough, now we have to contend with adverts cooing us like sirens sponsored by Coca-Cola. Well, it’s not got to that stage quite yet where they know who you are but by using facial recognition software these digital soothsayers can identify your gender, ethnicity, and age. The data for different areas then gets analysed by some faceless marketing machine so the adverts can be area-specific, depending on what groups use that particular area at what time.

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