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Facebook and Huawei are the latest companies trying to fool facial recognition
Researchers from Facebook, Huawei and several universities show how software, stickers and clothing can confuse artificial intelligence
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Facial recognition technology is already ubiquitous in China, where it’s used for everything from making payments to catching jaywalkers. Avoiding the cameras might be impossible these days, but it is possible to prevent them from recognizing you.
That’s what researchers around the world are working on, and Facebook is just the latest to develop a “de-identification” system.
The system developed by the company’s researchers can supposedly alter key facial features in videos, even working in real time for live streams, in order to “decorrelate the identity,” according to a paper released by Facebook.
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This is an improvement over existing de-identification methods, according to the paper, because they often only work on still images or swap faces others from a database, which could be abused by creating misleading videos. Facebook’s new method generates completely new faces.
These newly generated faces are similar to the existing face and preserve the original expression, pose and skin tone. The paper calls the method “benign in nature.” But the company does not plan to add the technology to any Facebook apps at this time, VentureBeat says.
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