Semiotics of facial signs in the West and the East
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11065945Keywords:
Face, semiotics, forensics, fingerprint, artificial intelligenceAbstract
The necessity of identification in societies, especially in law enforcement, has created a historical interplay between criminals’ efforts to hide or change their identities and societal efforts to expose such deceptions. Semiotics, the study of signs, is crucial in understanding these detection and identification methods, including in forensics and criminology. Historically, the face has been a significant identifier, but its reliability was questioned in forensic medicine, leading to the adoption of fingerprinting, inspired by practices in China, Japan, and India. With the advent of the digital era, fingerprinting evolved into a digital form and is now being replaced by facial recognition technology. This return to facial analysis in digital AI forensics brings several sociocultural biases, which semiotics can help to uncover and analyze.
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