The advent of technology has definitely changed all our lives and for the better. A decade back who would have imagined a smartphone that can recognize your face and get unlocked. But the advancement in technology made this possible. However, the concept of facial recognition is not that new. Going by the record, this technology first developed in the mid-1960s. Surprised to know this?

It is said that Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson began to work on this technology so that computers can recognize the human face. And no wonder this invention became a game-changer in the field of military intelligence and security. There are many facial recognition apps in the market, and we are sure you must be using one right now.

What is Facial Recognition?

As discussed above in our introduction, though this technology is on the rise, the term is not new. The first use of this technology dated back to somewhere in the mid-1960s. Facial recognition is the technology where computers or machines can trace and match a human face from all the database stored.

Today, a machine can not only match a human face with the database stored but can also read human face emotions. This technology is widely explored and is used to enhance our day-to-day experience. Imagine your TV to read your mood and emotions and suggest channels accordingly or play your favorite song by seeing that it’s you who is watching. Companies offering mobile app development services are working on this technology and trying to integrate it into the various mobile apps for enhanced user experience.

Though the full potential of facial recognition is not yet explored, this technology is widely being used in the field of security and military intelligence. Using facial recognition and biometrics, these agencies store the details of all criminals in their database. Even banks and other financial institutions, these days, use Facial Recognition technology for user authentication.

Read Also: Top AI Development Trends for 2023

The Market Share (Statistics and Reason for the Rise)

Talking about the market share, this technology is constantly on the rise. According to the statistics, the market for facial recognition apps was approx. 3.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 and now it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.6% and reach approx.7 billion U.S. dollars by 2024.

Talking about various factors that are driving growth in this industry, data breach and security is the major one. Facial Recognition is one of the best ways for safety. Here are a few examples of how the application of this technology can bring a change into myriads of business sectors:

Increased user engagement

Facial recognition apps can increase user retention and user engagement for your business. All you need to do is hire a proficient mobile app development company that can develop a feature-rich facial recognition app for your business that can read your users’ facial expressions and recognize their faces. This way, businesses can offer personalized services to their customers.

Increased Safety

This is a great technology that can increase the chances of user safety. One such example is Caterpillar. It is an app that is capable of recognizing the face of sleepy drivers by analyzing the position of their eyes and head and alert them. This way a lot many accidents can be avoided that are caused due to driver’s negligence when they are too tired. Reports shared by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety mentioned that nearly 328,000 crashes occur annually due to drowsy driving, which can be avoided if a driver can get a wake-up call every time they fell asleep.

System Security

Another important reason for the growth of facial recognition apps and technology is organizations’ security. Big giants like Google and Amazon are already using this technology to secure and protect their data and systems. Many organizations are using this technology for user authentication where a user has to either smile or wink. Even healthcare centers, these days, use facial recognition technology to pull out a patients’ history.

Apart from these three, there are lots of advancements that can be done in an organization using facial recognition technology.

How does Facial Recognition Work?

Now, we are sure that after reading so much about this technology, you might be curious to know how facial recognition actually works. Though we are not going to talk about an in-depth process but will talk about it in short so that you can have a clear understanding of the functioning of this technology before implementing it to develop an app of your own.

This technology works in the principle of image analysis technology, wherein the image entered can be in a still form or in the form of a video. It is generally a five-step process that involves:

  • Detection of a face
  • Alignment of a face
  • Extraction of prominent features
  • Matching features of both the Image
  • The result

So, this is a basic process where the software first detects a face and aligns it properly. It then works on extracting prominent features like eyes, nose, and lips that can be matched and then try to match with the other image or a video, and once done it gives the final result. Though the process that each software follows is more or less the same but based on the algorithm, the approach may differ. So, if you are planning to get your own facial identifier app developed, you need to hire mobile app developers having experience in the same field so that they can deliver what you wished for.

Top 5 Facial Recognition Apps for 2023

Now that you are aware of the whole process of facial recognition and know how does various facial matching apps work, let us see some of the most popular facial recognition apps to use in 2023:

1. AppLock

Available for: Android users

AppLock is one of the most popular free apps for Android users that is used to lock their apps on their smartphones. Launched in 2012, this app not only uses facial recognition as a password but users can also use their voice to unlock their favorite apps.

Using this app Android users can save their social media accounts, their banking apps, and various other apps that have sensitive information stored. Users get three options to choose from for their password setting option: password, facial recognition, and voice recognition. Users can either lock all the apps on their phones or can choose the apps they like to lock. One of the best features is that this app works in offline mode as well.

2. FaceApp

Available for: Both iOS and Android users

Launched in 2017, this app was an instant craze among the users. This face detection app was first launched just for iOS users but seeing the increase in demand, was launched for Android users too.

This app won many hearts for its aging feature and many celebrities were seeing posting changed pictures of themselves using this app. This app facilitates people to see how they will look after certain years and this is what went viral. Now, this app has many features like Gender Swap, Age Filter, Smile Filter, and a lot more. This app is also famous among users for making them look like their favorite celebrity and this app paved a way for much another celebrity look alike app solutions in the market.

3. Face DNA Test

Available for: Android users

One of the most advanced apps available for Android users that just compare two faces and features to see if in any way they are related or not. It calculates the unique facial points of a person and based on algorithms it compares the two faces and finds a genetic connection like for siblings. It is quite an advanced app as it offers a variety of DNA testing options for its users.

4. FaceFirst

Available for: Both iOS and Android users

This company is known to create facial recognition software that aims to make Earth a safer planet. This app is highly used in law enforcement and the military as it helps them in matching pictures of personnel in the field very quickly and effectively against their databases.

This facial matching app helps law enforcement officers find out the identity of individuals and help improve security by ensuring they do not make any mistakes while arresting people. It also allows officers to create a watchlist wherein they can easily enroll suspected criminals for future references.

5. Blippar

Available for: Both iOS and Android users

One of the best object and face matching apps, Blippar helps users to learn in-depth about their surroundings. It is an Augmented Reality (AR) object and faces recognition app that allows users to use its large database to recognize nearby objects like plants, landmarks, animals, and food items.

Not just the non-living objects, it can also recognize people around you and find them in its database. For example, if a user scans any plant around them, this app will give them all the details starting from its name to family to climatic conditions required to survive and a lot more. It is a great app for kids if they want to learn.

How to Monetize free Facial Recognition Apps

How do free apps make money? This is the most common question that business owners, who are new to app development, have in their minds. But the answer to it is very simple. There are the various monetization strategies following which one can easily earn money from their free apps. Here are a few ways via which you can make money from your free facial recognition apps:

In-app Purchases

This is one of the most common and preferred ways of earning money via free apps. If you are planning to make your face scanner app available for free on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, you can opt for this method. Here some of the common features are for free while the advanced once comes with a cost. For example, you can keep some filters for free and charge your users for some advanced filters.

Subscription

Just like in-app purchases, you can opt for a subscription model. You can make your app available for free for some time, and once your users start loving the app, you can ask them to pay for the continuous usage. This monetization model is highly popular among video-streaming apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Advertising

A nice way to earn money via free apps, advertisement is one of the best monetization strategies to go for. However, it can sometimes get tricky as you need to be very prudent in choosing which ad to advertise based on what your users are liking. There are four different types of ads you can go for.

You may choose any one of the above models based on what your users like. However, before choosing the right monetization strategy, you must conduct comprehensive market research and also see what your competitors are offering so as to not over-price anything.

How to Develop a Facial Recognition App like FaceApp?

Remember FaceApp, a facial recognition app which we have discussed above. Withina short span of three years, this app became highly popular among users and even celebrities were not behind in using this app and posting pictures of themselves. It is one of the most popular celebrity look-alike apps that is very much popular among users all over the world.

According to the reports, this app clocked approx. 30 million downloads in July 2019, becoming the most downloaded app for both Android and iOS platforms. Also, Forbes claims that this app is earning a minimum of $4 million annually.

Seeing the success of this app, many entrepreneurs have launched their version of celebrity look-alike apps. According to a top AI development company, the demand for facial recognition apps and celebrity look alike app is constantly increasing. So, if you are also planning to enter into the world of app development with a popular facial scanning app, or a celebrity look-alike app, and looking for ways to do so, hold on tight, today we are going to discuss this in detail.

Ideas to Consider for Face Recognition App like FaceApp

Getting a mobile app developed is not a one-day process. Before you actually hand over your project to a proficient mobile app development company, you must come up with an idea first and do detailed research on it. Look whether or not that idea will give you fruitful results ad is worth investing money. If you are going for a face identifier app you may go for:

Voice-Based Celebrity look-alike App

Why not create an app where users can take a picture of themself and instead of typing their favorite celebrity name, they can use a voice command which can do the same? Not just that, video-making apps like TikTok got quite popular in recent times and you can integrate similar features in your app so that users can easily imitate the voice of their favorite celebrity.

Animated Look-Alike App

These days more than adults using phones, kids like playing with them. They love to convert themselves into their favorite animated creature or cartoon and what better than to create an app that can do this for them. You could involve various features like learning, playing rhymes, and a lot more in your app.

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Must-have features to Include in a Celebrity Look Alike App

Now that you are sure of making going into facial recognition app development and getting a facial identifier app developed, here are a few must-have features that you must include in your app:

Original filters and effects

One of the most important features of any face match app or a celebrity look-alike app is its filters and effects. Options like face tuning and virtual make-up are quite in demand. Also, giving various filters, stickers, and masks just like those on Instagram can be a great choice.

Celebrity matching tool

One of the core features in the app like FaceApp, this tool will automatically detect the closest celebrities that look like the user on the picture. For this, you must hire app developers having experience working with face recognition, machine learning, and AI technologies.

Animation

An AI-powered feature that allows users to convert their picture into their favorite cartoon character. This feature is loved by kids and you can easily integrate this feature into your free facial recognition app.

Beauty score

These days most cameras have a beautifying tool so that it can enhance the features in a picture. Similarly, giving this option to your users is a great way to entertain and engage them in your app. Using AI your app can determine the overall beauty score and even give a small comment on it to make the app more entertaining.

Picture editor

What better than giving an option to edit a picture in the same app and then share it on various social media profiles. This feature will let users tune the colors and tones of their pictures before posting them somewhere.

Integrate games

To make your app stand out from the others available in the market, you can ask your mobile app developers to integrate small games like quizzes, making videos, creating avatars, etc.

How much Does it Cost to Develop a Facial Recognition App?

Now that you know what features you must include in your app, now comes the most important step. It’s time to set aside the budget for your facial recognition app. But how much does it cost to develop a mobile app, and how much money one should keep for your mobile app development process are some questions that most entrepreneurs have in their mind. Talking about the cost to develop a facial recognition app, it depends on various factors like:

  • App complexity
  • Features that you plan to include in your app
  • Location of your app development
  • App development team size
  • Hourly rate of the development team
  • Total time required

These are a few factors that affect the cost of mobile app development. Apart from them, the type of app, whether you plan to have a native app or a cross-platform app, affects the cost. This is because native app development is a bit costlier than cross-platform app development.

Still, to give you an estimate of the facial recognition mobile app development cost:

Basic AppAdvanced App
Time Required600 to 800 Hours900-1100 Hours
Average Hourly Rate$20 to $30$30 to $50
Total Cost$15,000-$30,000$30,000-$60,000

Conclusion

Facial Recognition apps are quite popular these days, and more and more entrepreneurs are getting them developed to make their business secure. Some of the top sectors that are already using these apps are airlines, military intelligence, banking and finance, retail stores, social media platforms, and the healthcare industry. So, if you are into any of these businesses or looking to secure your business, getting one developed is a great option. All you need is a proficient mobile app development company that can create a feature-rich, scalable, and robust app for your business.

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