Researchers Create 'Psychedelic' Stickers That Confuse AI Image Recognition (techcrunch.com)

"Researchers at Google were able to create little stickers with 'psychedelic'-looking patterns on them that could trick computer AI image-classifying algorithms into mis-classifying images of objects that it would normally be able to recognize," writes amxcoder: The patterned stickers work by tricking the image recognition algorithm into focusing on, and studying, the little pattern on the small sticker -- and ignoring the rest of the image, including the actual object in the picture... The images on the stickers were created by the researchers using knowledge of features and shapes, patterns, and colors that the image recognition algorithms look for and focus on.

These stickers were created so that the algorithm finds them 'more interesting' than the rest of the image and will focus most of it's attention on analyzing the pattern, while giving the rest of the image content a lower importance, thus ignoring it or confusing it.
The technique "works in the real world, and can be disguised as an innocuous sticker," note the researchers -- describing them as "targeted adversarial image patches."

Comments

Detail vs shape

[QuietLagoon]

It looks as if the AI is concentrating on the area with the most detail, even though it is not really relevant. I've seen similar, ummmm, distractions confuse AI. For example, disguising a stop sign so that a self-driving car is confused.

Re:Detail vs shape

[religionofpeas]

Humans have similar problems. Instead of stop sign, they sometimes concentrate on areas with the most detail, like a smartphone.

let's get that on clothing

[iggymanz]

Remember the "worlds ugliest t-shirt" in one of William Gibson's novels? All cameras in that book's world were compelled by their firmware to fill image of the wearer of that suit with background. One could laugh at such a notion except ....scanners won't do banknotes

ALPR?

[Ralgha]

Would one of these stickers on the bumper of my car defeat the automated license plate readers?

Re:Bright shiny objects

[sinij]

Humans do suffer from similar problem, however we have compensatory mechanisms to correct visual errors.

Ever glanced at something, seen something weird and had to do a double-take? This is exactly what happened to you. Quick neural nets misidentified something and you had to do full image processing to clear the confusion up.

The reason Humans know to do a double-take is because we have many other neural nets sitting on top of image identification nets. So when our image identification malfunctions, other nets red-flag it and do error-correction. Sometimes it takes long time to process. Sometimes we decide it is just safer to get the hello out of there (e.g. seeing ghosts).