Face-Swapping Software To Protect Privacy

(0d0 writes "Some researchers at Columbia University's Computer Vision Labratory have developed software to automatically replace faces in batches of photos. Practical applications include protecting the identities of people in Google's Street View, coupling it with a digital camera's burst mode to create a perfect group photo, or protecting the identities of witnesses or law enforcement and military personnel. Other links to coverage include Boing Boing, American Public Media, and New Scientist."

Comments

I thought what I'd do was...

[Qzukk]

Beat everyone else to the Laughing Man reference.

Good news everybody!

[CaptainPatent]

Now we don't have to do it the old fashioned way.

Great!

[lobiusmoop]

Now everyone can be John Malkovich.

Here is an example

[johnny cashed]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/27/books/manjoo-600.jpg

Are you surprised? It is google, they sell advertising.

Funny..

[dahitokiri]

protecting the identities of [...] law enforcement and military personnel.

Funny, I don't remember LEA/military personnel actively trying to protect OUR privacy lately. One wonders why we shouldn't do the same for them.

Use at airports?

[Toe, The]

So when the airport screeners use their fancy equipment to look at our naked bodies... they can put someone else's face on them?

The mind boggles.

"I swear, I wasn't there!"

[ryanov]

Whose faces are they placing here? Couldn't that then be used to place someone's face in a place where they weren't? I realize it would have to be some kind of perfect storm for that to become a problem (face gets swapped just as someone was committing a crime or what have you), but... I dunno. Unless they're using fake faces, I wonder about this.

WTF!!?!

[vrmlguy]

Why the hell is there a tiny url (http://www.tinyurl.com/6ehog5) in this story? Where does it point? Goatse? Tubgirl? Some random PDF? This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen slip by the editors. It's not like this is Twittr, where you're limited to 140 bytes.

Maybe Slashcode needs something to automatically follow links in articles and replace them with their target if they redirect.

Re:WTF!!?!

[Coopjust]

It's unnecesary to use a TinyURL in this instance (I don't have any idea why the submitter would), but you can hop on TinyURL and have a cookie set to preview all TinyURL links (or get Greasemonkey scripts to change all tinyurl.com requests to preview.tinyurl.com, which isn't as easily wiped like a cookie).

That link goes to http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/publications /pdfs/Bitouk_SIGGRAPH08.pdf

Maybe slashcode could be modified to have an option to resolve all TinyURLs to original links and to edit the submission accordingly automatically. I'm sure slashdot's servers wouldn't care if they found out that a TinyURL redirected to goatse...but it would help the readers.

Re:Google StreetView does this already

[damiam]

Dude, no offense, but did you read the statement you linked to? Google has a simple process for removing imagery from Street View, which the property owners chose not to use. Google's not fighting to keep the photos up (since they would have happily taken them down if asked, and I think they might have done it anyway by now); they're fighting to avoid having to pay damages. It's hard to see how any damage was caused, since photos of the same house from street level were already publicly available online through their realtor's site (as well as satellite imagery, etc.), and the house is on a street that is not clearly marked as private.

Sure, Google probably shouldn't have taken the picture in the first place, but it's hard to argue that this is the beginning of some nefarious plan to start indexing the world's private property. One of their drivers made a mistake, drove down a private lane that was not clearly marked as such, and now they're trying to avoid paying large sums of money to a couple who suffered no real damages and are clearly not acting in good faith.