Are Hewlett-Packard Webcams Racist?

As if doing web chats or recording yourself on your computer isn’t nauseating enough, Hewlett-Packard computers now have motion tracking. This way you can get motion sickness wherever you move on the screen. Oddly enough, if you watch the video above you can clearly see that the motion tracking function on the HP computer stops once Desi Cryer gets into the frame, as opposed to when his white co-worker (Wanda Zamen) is in frame solo. HP put out a very politically correct statement on it’s customer service blog:

“The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose,” wrote Tony Welch, the lead social media strategist for HP’s Personal Systems Group. “We believe that the camera might have difficulty ’seeing’ contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”

It’s a nice way of saying “damn, this is something that we didn’t think we’d run into.” The video is clearly not meant to be mean, and HP computers clearly are not racist. It’s just humorous that Desi Cryer’s skin is so dark that it throws off the contrast recognition of the HP camera. Does HP now create a “black test” for all it’s computers with web cams (which these days is all of them)? Keep reading to see the video of Consumer Reports testing the same technology in an HP computer.