Racial Bias within Face Recognition: A Survey

Yucer, S.; Tekras, F.; Al Moubayed, N.; Breckon, T. P.

Abstract

Facial recognition is one of the most academically studied and industrially developed areas within computer vision where we readily find associated applications deployed globally. This widespread adoption has uncovered significant performance variation across subjects of different racial profiles leading to focused research attention on racial bias within face recognition spanning both current causation and future potential solutions. In support, this study provides an extensive taxonomic review of research on racial bias within face recognition exploring every aspect and stage of the associated facial processing pipeline. Firstly, we discuss the problem definition of racial bias, starting with race definition, grouping strategies, and the societal implications of using race or race-related groupings. Secondly, we divide the common face recognition processing pipeline into four stages: image acquisition, face localisation, face representation, face verification and identification, and review the relevant corresponding literature associated with each stage. The overall aim is to provide comprehensive coverage of the racial bias problem with respect to each and every stage of the face recognition processing pipeline whilst also highlighting the potential pitfalls and limitations of contemporary mitigation strategies that need to be considered within future research endeavours or commercial applications alike.

Citation

Yucer, S., Tekras, F., Al Moubayed, N., & Breckon, T. P. (2025). Racial Bias within Face Recognition: A Survey. ACM Computing Surveys, 57(4), 1-39. https://doi.org/10.1145/3705295

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 3, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Dec 23, 2024
• Publication Date: 2025-04
• Deposit Date: Sep 3, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 23, 2024
• Journal: ACM Computing Surveys
• Print ISSN: 0360-0300
• Electronic ISSN: 1557-7341
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 57
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 105
• Pages: 1-39
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3705295
• Keywords: racial bias, face recognition, face identification, face verification, machine learning, computer vision, image understanding, deep learning, AI
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2783838
• Other Repo URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.00817