Leave it to Apple to come up with a technology, yet again, that could completely change how the events industry does business.
Apple is set to launch the iPhone 8 later this year and is currently in the process of testing a feature that would allow users to unlock, authenticate payments and launch secure apps on an iPhone using 3-D face-scanning technology in lieu of fingerprint scans, as recently reported in Bloomberg. According to the Bloomberg source, who wished to be unnamed, the 3-D face scan takes in more data points than a fingerprint scan, providing even more security for the iPhone than past versions.
What does this mean for events? While attendees have already encountered face-scanning technology at airports when being processed at immigration and even on Facebook when its software identifies people in pictures, uses often complain about privacy issues if the technology is being used at events. However, if attendees start to trust the technology, face scanning could become much more commonplace for event check ins and even payment authentication or access control.
Same goes for augmented reality (AR) technology. The events industry has already seen QR codes come and go as a means of providing attendees with more information with the quick scan of a bar code. But engineers could take this a step further by combining AR and face recognition software to create easy access to someone’s event bio or contact information. Using a specially designed matching app, attendees would simply point at a specific person with the iPhone camera and screen to do a quick scan of their face and access whatever information they shared with the event staff or possibly even work as a Google search of the person.
While the 3-D face-scanning technology is still in development for the iPhone 8, the possibilities of how it could affect the events industry and beyond are seemingly endless.
