Actual Masks Designed To Block AI Facial Recognition 'from All Angles'?

A photograph of an individual carrying a black, hooded sweatshirt and a transparent, seemingly pleated masks shared to Reddit on Sept. 23, 2024, was described as documenting a “masks made to dam AI primarily based facial recognition from all angles.” On the time of this publication, the photograph had obtained greater than 99,000 upvotes on the platform.

A product designer certainly conceived of the masks to make “it attainable to grow to be unrecognizable for facial recognition software program.” Nonetheless, it is unclear whether or not this masks was really produced and offered commercially, or was merely a thought experiment, which suggests this declare is a mix of knowns and unknowns.

A Google key phrase seek for “anti AI facial recognition masks” revealed that the photograph proven within the Reddit submit was featured in a 2019 article printed by Business Insider article describing clothes designed to “trick facial recognition software program into pondering you are not a human.”

In response to the article, the lens-shaped masks was created by product designer Jip van Leeuwenstein whereas he was a scholar at Utrecht College of the Arts within the Netherlands.

The Civil Liberties Union for Europe additionally described the masks in a 2021 article as an effort to distort an individual’s look, however didn’t specify whether or not the product was publicly obtainable.

Neither submit famous whether or not the masks was a real product or only a design idea.

Van Leeuwenstein got here up with the masks as a part of the “Surveillance Exclusion” undertaking, which is described on his web site as:

Digital camera’s and different applied sciences create a safer residing setting than ever earlier than. Mega databanks and excessive decision cameras inventory a whole bunch of exabytes a yr. However who has entry to this information?

Not solely the safety division but additionally the commercial business is on this know-how. They pay to make use of actual time information to their benefit. They create ads that decision your identify, hold information of your private pursuits and so they comply with you in all places you go.

By carrying this masks shaped like a lens it attainable to grow to be unrecognizable for facial recognition software program and due to it is transparence you’ll not lose your identification and facial expressions. So it is nonetheless attainable to work together with the folks round you.

The creator additionally printed a photograph of the masks (or a mock-up of it) to his Instagram account in July 2017:

Van Leeuwenstein’s work was featured on the Inter-Society for the Digital Arts (ISEA) symposium in 2020, an annual gathering self-described as fostering “interdisciplinary educational discourse and change amongst culturally numerous organisations and people working with artwork, science, the humanities and rising applied sciences.”

He was described as “a speculative designer questioning in the present day’s society.”

“His work balances between design and science. Jip’s initiatives are designed to make the spectator marvel; how did we arrive at this level?” learn the ISEA website.

Within the video under, which was additionally shared on the ISEA web site, Van Leeuwenstein says that his work is a “steadiness of design and science.”

Snopes reached out to van Leeuwenstein to ask if the masks really exists or is just a design idea. We’ll replace this text if we obtain extra data.

The masks joins a growing list of wearable objects designed – however not essentially produced – to dam facial recognition know-how. For instance, Polish designer Ewa Nowak developed “face jewelry” [sic] in 2019 to make its wearer “unrecognisable” to cameras.

Isao Echizen, a professor on the Nationwide Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, designed a “privacy visor” outfitted with near-infrared LED lights to dam a wearer’s face.

“Whereas the type of anti-facial recognition masks varies significantly, the perform is all the time the identical: to alter one’s look a lot that the facial recognition software program is unable to get an correct picture of the face, thereby stopping identification,” wrote the Civil Liberties Union for Europe.

Researchers on the College of Chicago Bodily Sciences Division described a framework to judge these applied sciences in a research offered on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Symposium on Security and Privacy in Might 2023. They famous that whereas wearable gadgets might supply short-term safety towards AI-recognition, they do not present long-term ensures.

“An individual’s face usually does not change a lot over time and a facial recognition system that may overcome some anti-facial recognition disruption will finally render that device ineffective,” learn a information launch on the time.

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