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Students Add Facial Recognition to Meta Smart Glasses to Identify Strangers in Real-Time
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You haven't been paying good attention. Just look at the cameras at each intersection, toll, etc.
Those cameras are taking your photo and searching for a match on a database of wanted people/people of interest.
They don't need glasses when they have eyes all over the cities.
The problem is, for every blind person who could use something like this in a legitimately great way, there are 100+ creepy weirdos who will use them for nefarious reasons.
Yeah I already know that. But I'm against AI being used for malicious purposes.
Vision Pro isn’t the future; it’s a dystopian hellscape. <--- So true.
It's only a matter of time before this is a class action brought against Meta, and deservedly so:
www.keglawyers.com
Invasion of Privacy in California - Penal Code 647(j) PC
With more security cameras activated than ever before and modern technology making it possible for virtually anyone to snap a photo or capture video at any time, it's easy to feel as though personal privacy is a thing of the past. But in California, privacy is still a legal protection...
www.keglawyers.com
That's not the same as mobile cameras broadly available to the general public which can be easily altered for privacy- and security-infringing purposes.
I feel like there’s a much faster way to get peoples private information with a meta product. Like.. straight from their servers?
seems that you are not paying attention, one is government use and granted that might not always be good, but this puts it in the hands of average Joe - no thank you
There will be gray areas. This would make a t.v. commercial compelling to some and off-putting to others. A guy sits alone at a bar, looking lonely. He noticed a hottie a few stools over. He slips on his Meta glasses, looks around a bit, glances at her for a 'read,' then drinks his beer while they fill him in. Doreen Smith, age 24, in college, Democrat, posts a lot about pet rescues and a fan of Taylor Swift. When our boy makes his movie to go chat her up, he knows enough to tailor his approach.
Meta...the power to KNOW...
What about the practical jokes? Young guy wants to have some fun, so he buys a pair of cheap glasses that look just like these, once the public becomes widely aware of them. He's on the subway, notices other people can observe what he's doing, and he puts on his glasses. For a few minutes, he acts like he's enjoying content via the glasses, aimlessly looks around...then stares worriedly at someone reading a paper across the aisle. He suddenly looks quietly terrified, and hurriedly leaves the car. Others are wondering what monster he identified. The guy reading the paper is just some random guy.
Oh, and could you insert bad info. on someone by posting things online? Or what if there's a pedophile with the same name as you?
Meta...the power to KNOW...
What about the practical jokes? Young guy wants to have some fun, so he buys a pair of cheap glasses that look just like these, once the public becomes widely aware of them. He's on the subway, notices other people can observe what he's doing, and he puts on his glasses. For a few minutes, he acts like he's enjoying content via the glasses, aimlessly looks around...then stares worriedly at someone reading a paper across the aisle. He suddenly looks quietly terrified, and hurriedly leaves the car. Others are wondering what monster he identified. The guy reading the paper is just some random guy.
Oh, and could you insert bad info. on someone by posting things online? Or what if there's a pedophile with the same name as you?
Yes, and include the bean counters at Meta in the creepy category.
"Let's see if it remains private". The answer does not matter. The article said the software was created by two students. This kind of thing can be recreated by almost anyone. And you don't even need the Meta glasses. Just place an iPhone in your shirt pocket with the lens exposed and you have about the same thing.
I was a computer science student about 40 years ago and have been working in the industry since then. I think I could duplicate these students' work in a few months. There are hundreds of people smarter than me who could do it faster and with a little effort make it work with more kinds of cameras and package it up as open-source and then it would be available for free worldwide. It only takes a few months of work by competent developers. This kind of thing does not require the resources of a company like Google, just two students.
What's happened between the time I was a student and now is that (1) some rather fundamental theoretical innovation has happened, like the backpropagation algorithm, and we now have the web and GitHub where I and anyone can find and access the work of many other very smart people. So I can download the core face recognition libraries and then glue it into the glasses app and I don't have to re-invent much. I can do "copy and paste" programming.
We don't even have to "stand on the shoulders of giants" to make this kind of thing. Rather we find many giants and stack them on each other's shoulders. We basically are gluing big blocks of code together and rarely have to write something from scratch.
This is why I laugh at the idea of "regulating AI". It is almost as laughable as trying to regulate how pasta is to be cooked. There are far too many pasta chefs working in their own homes and the bar of entry is very low.
If you are talking about goggles, who can take pictures, then Apple did it the wrong way. Question is: what do I see trough these glasses. Do not tell me, that I have to pick my phone to see, what I see trough the camera. This is not called AR, this is called "a camera on my nose"As much as I hate to give Meta credit for anything, THIS is how you do an AR wearable, not the Apple Vision Pro. A wearable that looks like a “normal” non-tech item, that unobtrusively adds smart functionality.
There was a Sci Fi podcast that talked about a near future where AR glasses were the norm… I’ll come back with a link. EDIT Season 2 of “Dust” -
COVID is not the only reason I mask.
Two students at Harvard University modified a set of Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses to add AI-based facial recognition technology, and the result is a wearable that is able to identify people in real time, according to a report from 404 Media.
The modified Meta Glasses are able to use the camera to scan a stranger's face to get their name, and there's also a function for pulling information like home address, phone number, and family members from internet sites that store that kind of data.
AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, the creators, demonstrated the glasses in public. Ardayfio walked up to a total stranger, scanned her face, got her name and affiliations, and then pretended that he knew her from one of the organizations that came up in a search about her. In a second demo, Nguyen identified a random man and initiated a conversation, pretending to have read his work based on what the glasses surfaced.
The Meta Glasses were set up to stream video directly to Instagram, and a computer program monitors the stream. AI determines when a face is detected, and then an internet search is conducted to find more pictures of the person. From there, online articles, voter registration databases, and other public information is used to suss out a name, phone number, address, and relative's names. Everything happens in a couple of minutes, and it's fed back to a smartphone app.
Dozens of Harvard students were identified and they were never aware that AI face scans had been used to suss out their names and information about them. Nguyen said that the project is meant to raise awareness of what can be done with today's consumer technology, face search engines, LLMs, and public databases. The two creators have no plans to release any kind of product or code.
Nguyen and Ardayfio chose the Meta Ray-Ban Glasses because "they look almost indistinguishable from regular glasses," making them ideal for surreptitious image capture. Reverse facial recognition was used to match faces to publicly available images, and PimEyes, a face recognition search engine, was identified as the "most effective" way to find people. An LLM was used to look up details about a person across the web, and FastPeopleSearch provided additional information. The entire setup is automatic, thanks to LLMs.
Meta's Ray-Ban Glasses are simple in design and are primarily focused on taking images, but even that limited hardware is enough to generate detailed information about a person almost instantly. With a faster processor, on-device AI capabilities, better camera technology, and augmented reality, future products could do even more.
In response to the report, Meta told 404 Media that PimEyes facial recognition can be used with any camera, and it's not something that is "only possible because of Meta Ray-Bans." That is true, but the Meta Ray-Bans look like a standard pair of glasses, and many people aren't aware when the glasses are being used to take photos. PimEyes said that it found the report "quite surprising" because its search engine is "not designed to identify individuals, either directly or indirectly."
Article Link: Students Add Facial Recognition to Meta Smart Glasses to Identify Strangers in Real-Time
If two students can make this ai ‘weapon’ using inexpensive and readily available gear, makes you wonder what trillion dollar corporations and government entities can do.
