A bus stop billboard on London’s Oxford Street is using face recognition technology to target and only display the ad to women, according to an article from The Independent.

While the face recognition technology doesn’t work as most face recognition technology does, to determine the actual identity of the person in question, this one scans for traits such as distance between eyes, width of nose, length of jaw line and shape of cheekbone to determine the gender and, subsequently, whether or not to display the ad to the person in front of the ad.

The purpose of the ad only playing to women is actually secondary to the main intent, as it is first designed to help bring attention to the plight of poor women in developing countries.

Plan UK executives, who are behind the ad, hope an awareness of gender discrimination will also come across. While some have praised the content and intention behind the new advertising, some males have had trouble seeing the point as they would be interested in helping the charity but are completely unable to get information from the ad.

Read the full story here.

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