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Google Patents Software To Identify Real-World Objects In Videos
hypnosec writes "Google has been recently granted a patent that could not only improve online search, but also will possibly give the search engine giant an awful lot of information about the world. Google wants to scan and analyze the content within videos (YouTube videos, most probably) and look for objects in the real world, identify them, and make a catalogue out of those objects. The patent describes Google's technology of scanning a video, picking out landmarks, objects and context; and subsequent tagging and categorization."
Adds reader MojoKid: "The privacy implications of such an automated system are enormous. Facebook's own automatic facial recognition software was highly controversial when it debuted, and what Google has now patented puts Facebook to shame. The larger question, unaddressed in this patent, is whether we want our individual personal data to be tagged, filed, and logged without permission or choice."
The larger question, unaddressed in this patent, is whether we want our individual personal data to be tagged, filed, and logged without permission or choice."
How is a video uploaded to youtube 'individual personal data"? Sometimes it seems like we just want to complain about stuff.
I definitely want my (very few) youtube videos categorized, and most importantly, I want to be able to look for video contents.
By the way, the IO keynote demoed a search by content on pictures uploaded to google drive (the speaker typed 'pyramid' and the search returned 2 pictures with background pyramids), so this seems like an obvious improvement over that.
Are you also a Warrior-Philosopher hovering in a glass castle over California by any chance?
>> unaddressed in this patent, is whether we want our individual personal data to be tagged, filed, and logged without permission or choice
I'm not sure that you have any expectation of privacy in this case. You're putting videos on the internet at your own will or you are in a public setting where you are being filmed. I'm not sure if things like parties are considered to be private affairs or public outings or whatever and if you can expect that your actions will be kept secret from the world or not. Either way, I don't think that you can expect much. But, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know. However, I wouldn't expect that any part of my life that I freely share with the world in anyway should be kept private unless it was agreed to beforehand.
Also, with regards to Google in general, I think your permission is granted when you use Google services. When this goes live, and you don't want to participate, you can delete your youtube account and host it somewhere else. Maybe a place with more privacy control. For people who are caught in it because their friend posted a video, well, I think that kind of pertains to my babbling in the first paragraph.
After Andrew Ng's experiment with creating an unsupervised neural net of 16,000 computer cores at Google, it comes natural they have an interest in this field of photo/video tagging and start outputting some patents. There is a similar technology at (http://www.msravs.com/audiosearch_demo/) for transcribing speech to text and making archives of videos searchable by word (kind of like Google Books does for print).
Soon we will have all our huge archives of video, print and images analysed and searchable. Imagine the implications!
... you'd better not go outside. Somebody might see you! Better to stay in with the curtains drawn, and keep away from the windows just in case.
What I want is a little webcam that I can put on my shoulder, and which records everything (without uploading it anywhere). Then, when I want to know where my keys are, it'll show me the last recorded images that have keys in them.
What exactly are the new privacy implications of this system? Governments in western democracies are deploying facial recognition systems at street corners and license plate recognition systems to track vehicle movement, what does this bring that makes things significantly worse?
That last link is particularly egregious. It points to Chromebooks as a device that is dependent completely on Google services. How about also mentioning devices that already do the same, except that they have about a 100 times more users - iPhones and iPads. And even Windows devices are going the same way. What on earth does with ave to do with this patent, and how about mentioning that this isn't specific to Google. I am tired of this FUD implication that Google can steal all your data while others can't? What Google could do theoretically all other 'cloud' providers could do too, theoretically. How about comparing their actual records? Has Google turned on face recognition without your consent? Has Google changed your email contacts and personal email address on your profile and wiped your phone contacts? Do you really think Apple can't access the same stuff in theory from your iPhone the way Google can from their devices? Or the Facebook app that installs with just about every permission available?
And again, what does any of it have to do with this patent. If you upload a video to youtube for the whole world to see, is it really a big deal that Google knows that you use a Macbook?
the article says "Google's own vision for the future of computing is a Chromebook/Chromebox that's completely dependent on their own services for everything". Really? What's Apple's vision of computing? Amazon - ever used a Kindle Fire? In fact, Google sells very few Chromebooks, and most Google affiliated devices sold are Google Android devices, which offer far more freedom. You can use it with non Google accounts. You can disable and remove Google services, and Google allows apps that compete with Google services (Apple bans those - reproduce the functionality of an Apple service or app and you get banned). Amazon is equally restricted if you've ever used a Kindle Fire.
And there are several unlocked Android phones and devices where you can install Google free versions of Android like Cyanogen, and do whatever the hell you want without the privacy implications. How about raising awareness of those for people who are really concerned about privacy instead of spreading all this 'Google will steal all ur dataz oh noez' FUD. That ship bolted, the horse has sailed etc. ALL current device makers do that or are moving towards that model. Go to all the trouble of using and informing about Linux or De-Googled Android devices, or shut up and talk about real disasters when they happen like Facebook's several privacy booboos or the Google Wave fiasco. Not this FUD.
Rad.
OK, my beef is that it sounded to me that Image Recognition on a certain application got its own patent...
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
That is application using image recognition..
Image recognition towards a certain applicaiton... ...
bah
sleep is for the weak.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Is landmark identification within Google Street View
This is bound to happen. The question is:
Would you prefer Google to patent this, or someone like Apple?
Personally I would trust Google to consider user rights a little bit more, but the exploitation of such a system is damn scary.
Having have the time to read TFA yet, but just wondering, how does this patent differ from the Face Recognization routine?
Unlike the Face Recognization patent, this one has been written with the assistance of a spell checker.
Ezekiel 23:20
Yeah that was my first thought, how can they patent something that the research community has been doing for years?
The problem is you don't have a say over this: Even if you're not a iPhone-weilding Youtube-uploading Instagram-snapping Facebook-addicted Gmail-enabled Twitter-junkie, you will have friends that are and upload information about you without thinking about it. I'm Privacy aware, but many non-technical people aren't. Now add to that webcams and surveillance video and there is no escape. No wonder they've been dragging their heals on privacy legislation with real teeth: Corporations will love it for data-mining and government will love it for surveillance.
Take this girl: She had a photo snapped of her at a friend's BBQ. They uploaded it to Flikr without thinking, and next thing she knows she's on advertising billboards: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesh00/515961023/ http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047772/virgin-mobile-sued-virgin
Here's an update on what happened with that case: Even though she was only 15 years old when the photo was taken *and* it was used in a for-profit advertising without her permission, the courts sided with the phone company (Virgin) who did this and dismissed her case. Virgin was unapologetic
http://blog.internetcases.com/2009/01/22/no-personal-jurisdiction-over-australian-defendant-in-flickr-right-of-publicity-case/
Did the Gauls worry about their privacy when Caesar wrote his "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" ? Could they have done anything about it ? Did it matter ?
Avoid your fears , or wonder at the past
I'm sure the government will see to it that they get this so Google and provide them information about brown people in return.
People should host their own content or find a company not interested in takin gall their data to sell advertisements and quit handing their life to google.
Look, I really don't care what Google knows about me. I don't care if they know every single website I visit, how many steps it takes me to get to a McDonalds, or what color my toothbrush is.
If their targeted advertising means I'll never have to see another ad for tampons and lipstick, or a bar in Austria (a place where I don't live), then I'm happy.
You can patent anything these days. It's slightly less worrying to see Google patenting stuff because they have only used patents defensively. I am sure these days Google patents absolutely anything they can think of.
There's a Google Tech-Talk that got posted a few days ago, which is not specifically about this patent, but may shed some light on what they have in mind: The Distributed Camera: Modeling the World from Online Photos
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
the Revolution will NOT be televised, or it's never gonna get off the fucking ground....
too easy to identify the participants now....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Sigh. They're not patenting the recognition, they're patenting a specific method of doing so. You need the read the claims.
Dilbert RSS feed
A patent search will not turn up this patent. This particular patent holder can retroactively exercise their patent rights. They are the only patent hold that can do this.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
they're patenting a specific method of doing so.
There is nothing specific about the methods they're patenting. I just worked on a very similar project, and after reading the patent, I see very little separating what they patented from what we did. Indeed we don't use dimensionality reduction the way they suggest (although we did use it for a while), and we don't provide specific names for the objects we discover (though we have talked about doing so via crowdsourcing). Indeed our work is more recent than the patent filing, but people have been attempting similar things for ages (e.g. [1], [2]...they are very easy to find). Worse, the two papers I cite provide enough detail to actually produce a working system, whereas the patent provides little detail beyond a few references to well-known machine learning and computer vision techniques. And even when they suggest methodology, it's always "maybe we'll use this, maybe not", and further they tend to list several potential methods without any indication that they've researched which ones work.
You do realize that at the bottom of your project's page you list your sponsors, and they include Google. Did you carefully read the terms of the grant? It wouldn't surprise me if they own some kinds of rights to your work.
John
Hopefully (I've not checked) they're patenting a method of doing so, not just the woolly concept of "do it". That's the actual idea of patents, and why the Apple design patents are so daft. Anyone can say "I'm patenting thin rectangular devices" without having any designs that actually do so. But if I try to patent "a device for heating water to boiling point", I'd be expected to actually include the specific design for my kettle.
If Google have genuinely come up with a new, reliable way of doing something that "experts in the field" have been trying to do for years without success, that's a genuinely important invention. The sort the patent system is actually designed to reward.
Siggraph has had several submissions doing this same thing. I hope the patent fails.
Sit down on this cot, we're going to give you a shot which will make you much more relaxed. And then
we are going to show you to your new room. Sorry, it has a very small window and you won't get out much,
but you will be safe from THEM.
You must have missed the memo. The drugs are too expensive and we don't have enough space for private rooms.
Here's some tinfoil. Make a nice hat.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't even have access to read the terms of the grant, since the grant is for my advisor. As far as I know, Google does not have any specific rights to the research, which is why we were able to release the results, algorithm, and code into the public domain, and nobody has ever told me that dissemination or use would be restricted in any way. It's common for compaines like Google to fund public research that they will later have no control over, since this sort of work benefits Google more than it benefits any of its competitors. And no, that benefit doesn't depend on patents; it's simply because Google has access to huge amounts of data, compute power, and machine learning/computer vision expertise.
The next story out of Google will be that the software was deleted after it realized that 90+% of the pictures on the Internet are penises and needed therapy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Although I'm skeptical of software patents, if there are going to be software patents, then this would be one that deserves it.
I mean, this actually took some work and innovation. It's not a simple DrawRect (or whatever) with a rounded corner radius set, which any high schooler in a programming class could do.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Sounds good for google glass version 2+ too. I'd like to be able to look at something and be shown relevant information without having to describe it in a way a search engine expects. Reminds me of Continuum.
That's the idea behind patents. They aren't kept secret, so you can be free to publish anything that you want about them - but they are still owned by the rightsholder. The real question you could ask your advisor is if you are free to build a product or a business around this research, or if he is free to do so. If not, then it's likely the patent rights are owned by someone who is not your advisor.
Assuming it's Google, your advisor may still be free to monetize them. Whether or not Google attempts to defend them in court is a completely different issue. Google may only hold patents on the research ensuring that nobody else is in a position to clamp down on their execution. If so, that's a good thing.
John
Especially United States Patent 8250019 (System and method for interactive knowledge visualization) claim 9:
9. A method for interactive knowledge visualization, comprising: receiving, at a knowledge visualization server, a request for one or more visualizations; retrieving data associated with the one or more visualizations from one or more databases; converting the data associated with the one or more visualizations into visualization data,...
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
If you post a video to youtube, then you want it to be public. If you are filmed and put onto youtube, you were in public or gave permission to be filmed in private. If this is not the case, then it will be easier for you to locate the violations and request their removal. This is a benefit to privacy. I like the idea and would like to see this service in action. I support youtube with this invovation and request that those who perfer privacy continue to stay away from youtube and public spaces.