Azure AI Vision SDK 1.1.0 Release

Refresh of the Liveness SDK with a few improvements:

• Increased time-out for the head-turn scenario to provide end-users more time to complete the flow.
• Fixes to iOS and Android SDKs to resolve compatibility issues with Microsoft Intune Mobile Application Management SDKs.
• Security related fixes/improvements.

To learn more on how the Liveness SDK versioning works and to evaluate how critical these updates are, please refer to the documentation here.

Azure AI Vision SDK 1.0.0 GA Release

Liveness SDKs Are Now In GA!

The new SDK allows developers to utilize face liveness checks on both native-mobile applications and web-browsers applications for identity-verification scenarios. The liveness solution is designed with both security and developer experience in mind, handling all of the internal complexities of performing and evaluating face liveness checks accurately. This enables developers to easily plug and play the liveness check into their applications, which significantly speeds up the development process.

The SDK supports both "Passive" and "Passive-Active" modes, while the "Passive-Active" mode is recommended as the default on the web solutions. The hybrid Passive-Active mode is designed to require Active motion only in poor lighting conditions, thereby utilizing the speed and efficiency of the Passive liveness checks in optimal lighting. The Active motion technique extends the lighting operational range, allowing the solution to function effectively across various lighting conditions. Both the Passive and the Passive-Active modes are highly optimized to minimize end-user friction during the liveness check operation.

The liveness solution complies with ISO/IEC 30107-3 PAD (Presentation Attack Detection) standards, as validated by iBeta level 1 and level 2 conformance testing. It effectively defends against various spoofing methods, including paper printouts, 2D/3D masks, and spoof presentations on phones and laptops. Liveness detection is an active area of research, with ongoing enhancements to counter increasingly sophisticated spoofing attacks. Continuous improvements will be rolled out to both client and service components as the solution is strengthened against new types of attacks.

Highlights of the SDK release:

• The new SDK combines both the algorithms and the UI implementations into a single interface which will allow developers to easily integrate the liveness check into existing mobile-native and web-applications with only a few lines of code.
• Both mobile (iOS and Android) and popular web frameworks such React, Angular and Vue.js have been tested to work well with the SDK.
• The iOS SDK supports iOS 14 as the min version, while the Android SDK supports API version 24.
• The web solution is tested across a large range of browsers as summarized below that specifies the minimum OS version number supported in each device and browser combination. This is an area that will have continuous improvements over time.
  

References:

• To get started: Face Liveness Tutorial

Azure AI Vision SDK 0.18.0-beta.1 (preview)

[Breaking Changes] The following changes are included in this release.

For the Mobile (iOS and Android) solution:

1. Introducing new "Passive-Active" mode support.
2. Introducing a new API surface that bundles the UI to simplify integration.

For the Web solution:

1. Updated API surface to improve the developer experience.
2. Algorithm improvements to ensure “PassiveActive” phase is more user friendly.
3. Runtime improvements to reduce the package size and fixes for runtime errors.

Please refer to the following documentation for more information on how to integrate the newly released SDKs into your applications:

• iOS: sample readme file
• Android: sample-readme file
• Web: readme file

Azure AI Vision Web SDK 0.17.2-beta.3

Refresh of the Vision Face Client Web SDKs with the following changes

Refresh of the Vision Face Client Web SDKs with the following changes

• Remove the need for setting CORS headers while serving faceanalyzer-assets.
• Reduced memory usage and binary file size for the assets.

Fixed bugs:

• Session goes to "Unexpected" as soon as it starts sometimes.
• Session goes to "FaceTrackingFailed" as soon as it starts sometimes.

Azure AI Vision Web SDK 0.17.2-beta.2 (preview)

Refresh of the Vision Face Client Web SDKs with the following changes

• Remove the need for setting CORS headers while serving faceanalyzer-assets.
• Reduced memory usage and binary file size for the assets.

Known bugs:

• Session goes to "Unexpected" as soon as it starts sometimes.
• Session goes to "FaceTrackingFailed" as soon as it starts sometimes.

Note: This release is not suitable to production yet due to the known issues. We will be releasing a fix soon by the first week of October.

Azure AI Vision SDK 0.17.2-beta.1 (preview)

Refresh of the Vision Face Client SDKs with the following changes:

For Web SDK:

• Fix for a large camera preview size issue repro'ing on various Firefox browsers.
• Reduced memory usage to fix some OOM issues.

For Mobile SDKs:

• Support for latest SDK requirements set by the Google and Apple app stores.

Mobile Face Liveness: Azure AI Vision SDK 0.17.1-beta.1 (preview)

Refresh of the Azure AI Vision Face Liveness detection for Mobile (iOS and Android) with the following changes:

• New feature to "Retry" Face Liveness session with same token. A token can be used to perform 2 retries.
• Improved UX to add "Retry" button.

Sample and Documentation Changes:

• Updated kotlin and swift samples for release 0.17.1-beta.1
• Changelog: 0.17.0-beta.1...0.17.1-beta.1

Azure AI Vision SDK 0.17.0-beta.1 (preview)

Introducing a new Liveness Web SDK in Public Preview.

The new SDK release now allows developers to utilize face liveness checks in web-browsers on both mobile and desktop devices for identity-verification scenarios. The liveness solution is designed with both security and developer experience in mind, handling all the internal complexities of performing and evaluating face liveness checks accurately. This enables developers to easily plug and play the liveness check into their applications, which significantly speeds up the development process.

By default, the liveness solution uses a hybrid "passive or active" technique. It is designed to require active motion only in poor lighting conditions, thereby enhancing the speed and efficiency of liveness checks in optimal lighting. The active motion technique extends the lighting operational range, allowing the solution to function effectively across various lighting conditions. Both techniques are highly optimized to minimize end-user friction during the liveness check operation.

The liveness solution complies with ISO/IEC 30107-3 PAD (Presentation Attack Detection) standards, as validated by iBeta level 1 and level 2 conformance testing. It effectively defends against various spoofing methods, including paper printouts, 2D/3D masks, and spoof presentations on phones and laptops. Liveness detection is an active area of research, with ongoing enhancements to counter increasingly sophisticated spoofing attacks. Continuous improvements will be rolled out to both client and service components as the solution is strengthened against new types of attacks.

Highlights of the Web SDK release:

• The new SDK combines both the algorithms and the UI implementations into a web-component. This allows developers to easily integrate the liveness check into existing web-applications with only a few lines of code. Popular JavaScript framework such React, Angular and Vue.js has been tested to work well with the Web SDK.
• The SDK also allows for customizations in terms of colors and fonts to allow developers to customize the look and feel of the solution.
• The web solution is tested across a large range of browsers as summarized below that specifies the minimum OS version number supported in each device and browser combination. This is an area that will have continuous improvements over time.
  

Release notes for the Mobile SDK also included in this release:

• Improved Apple App Store readiness.

References:

• Release blog with demo video: Blog
• To get started: Face Liveness Tutorial
• NextJS Sample: Readme.md

Mobile Face Liveness: Azure AI Vision SDK 0.16.3-beta.3 (preview)

Refresh of the Azure AI Vision Face Liveness detection for Mobile (iOS and Android) with the following changes:

• Improved Google Play Store and Apple App Store readiness.
• Added support for Face API Service private preview versions.
• Dropped support for iOS 9-11. The minimum supported version is iOS 12.
• Improved multithreading stability.

API Changes:

• iOS:
  • FaceAnalyzedResult.serviceResponseStatusCode: type changed from NSNumber* to NSInteger
  • FaceRecognitionFailureReason: 2 new enum values:
    • .faceMouthRegionNotVisible
    • .faceWithMaskDetected
• Android
  • RecognitionFailureReason: 2 new enum values
    • FACE_MOUTH_REGION_NOT_VISIBLE
    • FACE_WITH_MASK_DETECTED

Sample and Documentation Changes:

• Updated Kotlin and Swift samples for release 0.16.3-beta.3.
• Fixed Kotlin sample that may display verification image with wrong rotation in certain devices.
• Changelog: 0.16.2-beta.2...0.16.3-beta.3

Mobile Face Liveness: Azure AI Vision SDK 0.16.2-beta.2 (preview)

Refresh of the Azure AI Vision Face Liveness detection for Mobile (iOS and Android) with the following changes:

• Improved end-user positioning messages to dynamically ensure that the end-user comes closer in brighter environments to improve the success-rates.
• Improved compliance with Google App Store and Apple App Store rules for permissions and privacy-related APIs.
• Added support for confidential result mode where results are only available through querying Face API service.
• Improved Detect Liveness With Verify mode to enable verifying hashes of VerifyImage between client app and Face API service.
• Improved stability especially during teardown.

API Changes:

• iOS:
  • VisionServiceOptions.advanced is no longer nullable.
  • VisionSource.init(data:) new API to preserve VerifyImage hash.
• Android
  • VisionSource.fromByteBuffer(ByteBuffer) new API to preserve VerifyImage hash.

Sample and Documentation Changes:

• Updated kotlin and swift samples for release 0.16.2-beta.2
• Improved GET_FACE_ARTIFACTS_ACCESS.md
• Changelog: 0.16.1-beta.1...0.16.2-beta.2