The Future of Everything covers the innovation and technology that is transforming the way we live, work and play, with monthly issues on health, money, cities and more. This month it’s artificial intelligence, online from July 2 and in the newspaper July 9.

Facial recognition systems, long touted as a fast and reliable way to identify everyone from employees to hotel guests, are in the sights of scammers. For years, researchers have warned of vulnerabilities in technology, but recent projects have confirmed their fears and highlighted the difficult but necessary task of improving systems.

Over the past year, thousands of people in the United States have attempted to trick facial ID verification to fraudulently claim unemployment benefits from state employment agencies, according to the verification company d identity ID.me Inc. The company, which uses facial recognition software to help verify individuals on behalf of 26 U.S. states, says that between June 2020 and January 2021, it found more than 80,000 attempts to deceive the selfie stage in government identity matches among the agencies he has worked with. This included people wearing special masks, using deepfakes – realistic images generated by AI – or holding images or videos of other people, said Blake Hall, chief executive of ID.me.

Facial recognition for individual identification has become one of the most widely used applications of artificial intelligence, allowing people to make payments through their phones, browse passport control systems or identify themselves by as workers. Drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., for example, regularly have to prove they have a licensed account by taking selfies on their phone and uploading them to the company, which uses Microsoft’s facial recognition system. Corp. to authenticate them. Uber, which is rolling out the selfie verification system globally, did so because it was grappling with drivers hacking its system to share their accounts. Uber declined to comment.

Amazon.com Inc. and smaller vendors like Idemia Group SAS, Thales Group, and AnyVision Interactive Technologies Ltd. sell facial recognition systems for identification. The technology works by mapping a face to create an impression of a face. Identifying isolated individuals is generally more accurate than spotting faces in a crowd.