A New Zealand man of Asian descent had his passport photo rejected when facial recognition software program mistakenly registered his eyes as being closed.

Richard Lee’s try to renew his passport become blocked after he submitted the image to an online passport photo checker run by means of New Zealand’s department of inner affairs.

The automatic gadget instructed the 22-yr-old engineering student the image was invalid due to the fact his eyes have been closed, even though they have been truly open, according to a copy of the notification posted on social media website FB.

“No difficult feelings on my part, I’ve usually had very small eyes and facial recognition era is fantastically new and unsophisticated,” Lee informed Reuters.

“It becomes a robot, no tough emotions. I were given my passport renewed ultimately.”

Up to 20 percentage of passport images submitted online are rejected for diverse motives, an internal Affairs spokesman stated.

“The maximum common errors is a topic’s eyes being closed and that changed into the accepted mistakes message sent in this example,” he said.

The lighting fixtures in Lee’s first image changed into choppy, but a later one become regular, he delivered.