TONY JONES, PRESENTER: How would you feel if your fridge could recognise you, know you're on a diet and then refuse to open up for that impulsive midnight snack?

Well welcome to the new face of facial recognition technology, which industry leaders predict is about to migrate beyond policing and border control into your home and even your local shopping centre.

In retail, it could prompt VIP treatment, tailored marketing or special attention from security services.

But while the commercial possibilities of the technology excite the corporate world, privacy advocates are worried.

Earlier this year in the US, privacy and consumer groups walked out of government-led talks with industry aimed at developing a code of conduct for the spread of facial recognition. They claimed businesses refused to guarantee even basic levels of privacy.

In a moment we'll hear from a key industry representative who took part in those talks.

First, back to that fridge and the apparently shrinking space in our world for anonymity. Here's Margot O'Neill.

MARGOT O'NEILL, REPORTER: How much does your face say about you? Because it's about to launch a thousand new applications.

Already, some digital screens in Australia use facial recognition to show ads based on age and gender. The systems don't store personally identifying data, but beyond that, companies are refusing to comment. It's clearly a sensitive topic.

TED DUNSTONE, FOUNDER, BIOMETRICS INSTITUTE: It's a very new industry. There are a lot of issues, both technology issues, but also issues to do with community acceptance and privacy that still need to be sorted out. Some of those issues are still very new, so issues to do with legislation and what people need to tell other people and transparency. Best practice is that people should be notified if their biometrics are being collected and if their biometrics are being matched.

MARGOT O'NEILL: But there's so much more in the pipeline than just ads.

Entrepreneur Professor Brian Lovell has been developing cutting-edge facial recognition software for US and Australian security services.

BRIAN LOVELL, IMAGUS: This is what's called a non-cooperative system, meaning that it will get your identity without you necessarily knowing about it.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Now he wants to take it to the mass consumer market. He'll be loading his software into the latest augmented reality glasses from US company ODG. It will match who you see against a database of images and information.

BRIAN LOVELL: This whole system can be put onto a mobile or wearable device. So here I have some augmented reality glasses and we have face recognition on these, so the same system on a set of glasses.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Built into it.

BRIAN LOVELL: Yes. And if I stick these on, this gives you a full 3D heads-up display of the world and you can use this to recognise faces. It puts a little box around your face and say this is a person I'm looking at and some other information person, like this person is late for a flight or this person wants to order a cappuccino. You can have thousands of faces in it.

MARGOT O'NEILL: And what databases could it draw on?

BRIAN LOVELL: Any face databases.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Like, police databases, shopping databases? Anything ...

BRIAN LOVELL: Passenger lists, these sorts of things. You know, a customer list.

MARGOT O'NEILL: OK, that is amazing, but Google Glass banned facial recognition after a public backlash.

Brian Lovell says privacy guidelines will be observed, but you can tell he thinks we're all being a little oversensitive.

BRIAN LOVELL: If you're in a small town, like a small village, everybody recognises everyone else and everyone seems to get on quite well and when a stranger comes into town, they can't sort of rob all the houses 'cause everybody notices them. So, that's not such a bad society and we've lost that as we've moved to the big cities. The question is: does this bring something back more like the little village?

MARGOT O'NEILL: Your face could also replace the frustrating tangle of potentially hackable passwords that you never remember.

BRIAN LOVELL: Each employee is spending three weeks of their working life authenticating two systems. And I'm just thinking: how can we reduce that three weeks of login time and lost passwords and so on down to, say, one week.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Who knew selfies would become so vital, even activating cars.

But as fast as the technology develops, others are trying to get around it.

TED DUNSTONE, BIOMETIX: The mask technology uses synthetic material to create something which is very lifelike and it really is almost Mission Impossible. You can go online and you can order these masks very freely.

Ted Dunstone's company, Biometix, specialises in detecting how some people try to fake out facial recognition, like the mask.

TED DUNSTONE: But in the thermal image, he's looking a lot darker, and in particular around the eye regions, you'll notice that the eyes are really glowing at a much higher rate than the rest of the face, which is a giveaway that there's a mask. ...

... There was a case in 2010 with a Hong Kong national trying to get into Canada wearing a mask on a flight and he was only detected because he was wearing a mask which didn't match his hands. ... His hands looked young and his face looked old.

MARGOT O'NEILL: And just when you thought it was safe to take that selfie to authenticate your purchase ...

... So if we're using a selfie or my face to open a computer or a security system, I look in?

TED DUNSTONE: Yep.

MARGOT O'NEILL: (Laughs). I'm now Sean Connery. And it stays there, even when I move, when I talk.

TED DUNSTONE: You can move your face, you can - you can talk.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Hello, hello, hello.

TED DUNSTONE: This is using commonly available browser-based technology.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Would this pass muster for a selfie - security selfie or to open ...

TED DUNSTONE: Look, I think it's fair - in short, yes. In most instances, it probably would.

MARGOT O'NEILL: So get ready; facial recognition is coming to a device near you. The question is: who will oversee its rollout and what safeguards are needed.