…& n!ggaz goin crazy! :rofl :rofl
(CNN) – Can Hewlett-Packard’s motion-tracking webcams see African-Americans? It’s a question posed on a now-viral YouTube video and the company says it’s looking into it.
In the video, two co-workers take turns in front of the camera – the webcam appears to follow the white employee as she sways in front of the screen and stays still as the African-American man moves about.
The webcams, built into HP’s new computers, are supposed to keep people’s faces and bodies in proportion and centered on the screen as they move.
“As soon as my blackness enters the frame, it stopped,” the African-American man, identified only as “Black Desi” says in the video.
“Black Desi gets in there, no face recognition anymore, buddy,” he says.
The video went viral over the weekend, garnering more than 400,000 YouTube page views and a slew of comments on Twitter.
YouTube.com: Watch the video
“I think my blackness is interfering with the computer’s ability to follow me,” the man in the video says.
CNN reached out to the two people featured in the video through their YouTube profile but has not received a response.
In a corporate statement e-mailed to CNN, HP attributed the issue to lighting problems that they say other webcams also struggle with.
“HP has been informed of a potential issue with facial-tracking software. Consistent with other webcams, proper foreground lighting is required for the product to effectively track any person and their movements,” the statement said. “As with all our products, we continue to explore refinements which help to optimize their use.”
After media coverage of the YouTube video, Consumer Reports did its own testing of the product to see if the YouTube video portrayal was accurate. In standard lighting, the webcam didn’t move with an African-American male as it did with a white male. But after lighting sources were added, the webcam was able to track the African-American male’s face and movements.
