'Too dangerous:' Why even Google was afraid to release this technology
'Too dangerous:' Why even Google was afraid to release this technology
A startup called PimEyes allows anyone to identify a stranger within seconds with just a photo of the person's face. The technology has alarmed privacy advocates worldwide.
Permanently erase unwanted photos from external websites. Eliminate the problem of illegal usage of your image.
LOL...ok there..
Upload photo and find out where images are published upload bar arrow
Or you can take a photo with the device’s camera. Don’t worry, we will not store it!
LOL, won't store shit my ass
Consider the consequences, says journalist Kashmir Hill, of everyone deciding to use this technology at all times in public places.
"Something happens on the train, you bump into someone, or you're wearing something embarrassing, somebody could just take your photo, and find out who you are and maybe tweet about you, or call you out by name, or write nasty things about you online," said Hill
In an interview with NPR, he said the abuse of the tool has been overstated, noting that the site's detection tools intercepted just a few hundreds instances of people misusing the service for things like stalking
Y'all are angling for a gold medal at the understatement olympics.
There are potential uses of the technology that could be beneficial. For instance, for people who are blind, or for quickly identifying someone whose name you forgot and, as the company highlights, keeping tabs on one's own images on the web.
He continued: "PimEyes can be used for many legitimate purposes, like to protect yourself from scams," he said. "Or to figure out if you or a family member has been targeted by identity thieves."
OH, COME ON
I love how they really have to dig to even come up with some legitimate ways to use the technology.
My girlfriend has facial ephasia. Basically her brain doesn't easily break faces into the distinct parts the way most people do that allows for quick recognition.
She may as well be looking at butts with their lack of distinguishing features.
Not disagreeing with your point. The technology does not have adequate safeguards to prevent abuse by both individual and state actors. But it would legitimately help my gf feel less awkward socially.
I said this elsewhere, but I'll say it here too. Your girlfriend should not have to adapt to society to feel less socially awkward. The world needs to be more accepting of people with issues like that. It shouldn't be socially awkward. It should be okay for her to just say "Hey, sorry, I don't recognize faces without context. Where do I know you from?"
I had a friend years ago with aphasia and I would help them out when we'd meet by telling them what I'd be wearing and be on the look-out for them so I could walk up to them and they wouldn't have to pick me out of a crowd. I'd also usually greet them with my name. They were really good at identifying voices usually, but the small effort was always appreciated, and it's not that hard.
Their aphasia also extended beyond faces, so they would often have problems finding their car if they didn't park in the same place, so they would take a picture of the car and some landmark near by. They would show me the pictures so I could help them find it.
What I'm saying is, is we as a society are going to be social to this great of a degree, where we interact with dozens of people, we need to learn to make it a place where everyone can also be involved as they are, not force them to conform to impossible standards for them.
There is no "adequate safeguards" in such technology. If it's out there somehow, it will get abused if there's a reason for it. That's like a universal law. A product with such potential to be abused, will be abused, no matter what smart super solution for protection someone might come up with.
Not to say it wouldn't be a lifechanger for your gf or other people with a legitimate reason.
It would be less awkward to pull out a phone, take a picture of someone and pull up their info, adding their biometric data to some random company's servers (possibly against their wishes) instead of just asking what their name is? Seems way less awkaward and more reasonable to just say she has facial ephasia than do all that.
To protect us from scams they made it easier than ever to set up a scam!
Just plug your victims photo into this website and get every other photo they’ve ever posted!
Wait this is about Pimeyes? That's used to figure out who you know has an OnlyFans account, right?
Close. It's about Pimeyes which is used to figure out the name and location of the Onlyfans girl you have a weird parasocial crush on. What's the worst that could happen?
(Technically, it only finds other photos on the internet of whatever random person you have a single photo of, which you can then often leverage into knowing their name and location.)
All this facial recognition stuff is going to do is normalize wearing masks and other head-coverings in public.
I have been adamant since 2006 that myself nor anyone else post pictures of my face or my children’s faces on social media for I knew this day would come eventually
I know I'm old, but it was so violating when this first happened to me on facebook.
Going to parties became less fun and more boring, when you had to start worrying what you'd look like when someone posted a picture of you without your consent.
The kids one is more disturbing
The version of this technology that I would love to see is for each individual to have a database of people they've met before, so if you meet them again, your smart glasses can prompt you with their name and notes about them.
Basically Google allows you to do this in a limited form with Google Photos, minus the ability to do live recognition
I would sign up for this if it's opt-in and either decentralized or local storage-based. Otherwise I hope the fuckers who would ruin this idea for greed crash and burn.
‘To dangerous:’ Why even Google was afraid to release this technology publicly.
There. I fixed it ;-)
The US military has, in all likelihood, been already capable of this for the past 15-30 years. Google has no market other than the public, and there's no way to stop it from tagging rich people as "that asshole who owns what used to be twitter" but also the general public (us) would just end up flagging people we hate or envy or who we want revenge on to ruin people's reputations.
There is no upside for a tech like that in the hands of big money, not even for big money; done the way Google would do it, it would fracture society like nothing before it and that includes utterly destroying the economy before leading to some sort of nuclear exchange.
So the PimEyes subscription fee… is the only thing preventing global thermal nuclear war?
Seems as plausible as anything these days ;-)
This technology has been in place in public spaces like airports for at least a decade. They claimed it was to fight terrorism by scanning and collecting models of everyone's face looking for known terrorists. They said that they could identify the terrorists because even with a disguise, you can't alter the shape of your facial bone structure.
Being able to purge unwanted use of your image and info is nice, and to a lesser extent so would being able to call up a nametag for people you've met before, because introvert name recollection is the great killer of our society
Poor working memory is a huge ADHD trait. What the world needs is to drop the expectation of remembering names. ADHD, either as just a natural thing that the human brain does sometimes or as a result of other factors, is becoming an increasingly prevalent thing among a growing portion of the population. Yet the world is not built to accommodate people with it. Medication and therapy help, but the issues never really go away, and the solution in most cases shouldn't be to "fix" those with ADHD to make them more "normal," but to make the world into a place where they too can function. And this goes for anything neuro-divergent, obviously. We should get rid if the idea of making different people into "normal" people and instead make society a place where everyone can be accepted and function along side everyone else.
Sorry, I ranted a bit there...
It's ok, your "rant" was on point and easily readable! Thanks 👍
is there any positive use case for this? either you recognize them organically or you don't need to be knowing them
Maybe people with a brain injury/Alzheimer’s/face blindness/memory problems, if the tech could be integrated with glasses and make real time identifications of people you’ve met previously? But that’s a stretch. Bad people will use it to do bad things long before any good comes of it.
This, basically.
I have lots of trouble remembering people's names. I'm usually good at recognising faces, but my brain doesn't link the face to the rest of the person's information. Glasses that could tell me someone's name and maybe a few key facts would make a huge difference in my life.
You can use it on yourself to see what pictures are out there of you, and get notified if something new is posted that you may not know about without your consent. Don't see many legitimate reasons to use it on other people, but if it had some sort of identity verification so that only you could look up yourself I think it could be very useful.
You can use it to figure out who around you has been in porn?
Why is this negative compared to "organic" recognition?
I get not wanting to be in big centralized databases, but digital recognition of a feature you show publicly doesn't seem so nefarious to me.
Being able to compare someone's face to your own database is one thing. Being able to look up a random person using the entire Internet as a database is a stalker's utopia.