Digital Privacy: Algorithm Developed at University of Chicago Breaks Facial Recognition by Making Tiny Edits
From PetaPixel:
A team of researchers at the University of Chicago have developed an algorithm that makes tiny, imperceptible edits to your images in order to mask you from facial recognition technology. Their invention is called Fawkes, and anybody can use it on their own images for free.
The algorithm was created by researchers in the SAND Lab at the University of Chicago, and the open-source software tool that they built is free to download and use on your computer at home.
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According to the team, Fawkes has proven 100% effective against state-of-the-art facial recognition models. Of course, this won’t make facial recognition models obsolete overnight, but if technology like this caught on as “standard” when, say, uploading an image to social media, it would make maintaining accurate models much more cumbersome and expensive.
Direct to Complete Article
Direct to Project Website: Image “Cloaking” for Personal Privacy
Filed under: News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.