In bizarre news, it has been revealed that churches are now using a new wave of facial recognition technology to identify church-goers who skip services.
‘Churchix’, a facial recognition software, has now been introduced in 30 churches around the world in countries such as Indonesia, the US, Portugal, Africa and India, to keep a record of which congregates attend church and which skip the services.
It enables churches to monitor who is attending services by using CCTV camera surveillance, which scans the faces of those entering the building. The footage is then sent through to a computer and to be analysed.
This system has reportedly been introduced to help churches ascertain who is skipping out on church – and why.
According to IBTimes, churches are using this technology to connect with congregates that are skipping out on services to find out why their attendance has dropped, and how it can be stimulated again. Similarly, churches are also able to utilise this software to identify their most faithful attendees, in order to target them for donations and participation activities.
However, this new level of surveillance is not for everyone. Many people have come forward saying that they don’t feel comfortable being photographed and electrically patrolled, especially in a place of worship, whilst some believe that being photographed or monitored in this way in an invasion of privacy.
The CEO of ‘Face-six’, a facial recognition software firm based in Israel and the US, Moshe Greenshpan told IBTimes, “In the beginning I was surprised. We never thought of churches as potential clients, but we now understand the need. Most churches do already keep track of their members.”
“The job of keeping track becomes very difficult when you have many members in your church. When you have 1,000 members, it’s very hard to keep track manually.”
In fact, Face-Six was not even originally intended to be used by churches or by any other religious house of worship, but after numerous inquiries, the firm decided to pander to their requests.
“We didn’t have any intention to get into the church market, but orders started piling up. In a really short period time, we got emails and phone calls from about 10 churches and they all asked us for the same thing, and now we’ve had even more requests.”
But since they acquiesced to the churches’ requests, some board members and employees have felt uncomfortable about their very specific use.
“We encourage churches to use Churchix out in the open, so that people are aware of it, but so far the churches haven’t adopted that approach,” said Greenshpan. “I think people get a bad feeling when they hear about it and you can’t argue with that. But at the same time, the major question is, should the church keep track of members when they attend events, whether it is manually, or electronically?”
Facial recognition technology has previously been used in high security environments like casinos and prisons, but has only recently moved into places of worship, and, as of yet, it is unclear how much success these churches are experiencing through their use of Churchix.
