mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Racial Bias within Face Recognition: A Survey

arXiv 2305.00817 ↗First posted 1 May 2023cs.CVcited by 9

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Abstract (arXiv)

Facial recognition is one of the most academically studied and industrially developed areas within computer vision where we readily find associated applications deployed globally. This widespread adoption has uncovered significant performance variation across subjects of different racial profiles leading to focused research attention on racial bias within face recognition spanning both current causation and future potential solutions. In support, this study provides an extensive taxonomic review of research on racial bias within face recognition exploring every aspect and stage of the face recognition processing pipeline. Firstly, we discuss the problem definition of racial bias, starting with race definition, grouping strategies, and the societal implications of using race or race-related groupings. Secondly, we divide the common face recognition processing pipeline into four stages: image acquisition, face localisation, face representation, face verification and identification, and review the relevant corresponding literature associated with each stage. The overall aim is to provide comprehensive coverage of the racial bias problem with respect to each and every stage of the face recognition processing pipeline whilst also highlighting the potential pitfalls and limitations of contemporary mitigation strategies that need to be considered within future research endeavours or commercial applications alike.

Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 88 of its 237 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 May 2023.

Builds on

88 of 237 references.

References · 88

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38 more
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50 most cited of 88 All 88 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 1; 2025: 5; 2026: 2.

9 papers.

  1. 2025Review of Demographic Fairness in Face Recognitioncited by 7
  2. 2025Discovering Intersectional Bias via Directional Alignment in Face Recognition Embeddingscited by 2
  3. 2023What's color got to do with it? Face recognition in grayscalecited by 1
  4. 2024Disentangling Racial Phenotypes: Fine-Grained Control of Race-related Facial Phenotype Characteristicscited by 1
  5. 2025DemoBias: An Empirical Study to Trace Demographic Biases in Vision Foundation Modelscited by 1
  6. 2026Investigating Bias and Fairness in Appearance-based Gaze Estimationcited by 1
  7. 2025Component-Based Fairness in Face Attribute Classification with Bayesian Network-informed Meta Learningcited by 0
  8. 2025TrustSkin: A Fairness Pipeline for Trustworthy Facial Affect Analysis Across Skin Tonecited by 0
  9. 2026NAMESAKES: Probing Identity Memorization in Text-to-Image Modelscited by 0