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Facebook is Using Instagram Photos and Hashtags To Improve Its Computer Vision (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the of-course-it-is-doing-that dept.

Facebook today revealed that, using 3.5 billion publicly shared Instagram photos and their accompany hashtags, its computer system has achieved new advances, with a 85.4 percent accuracy rate when used on ImageNet, a well-known benchmark dataset. From a report: The results were shared onstage at F8, Facebook's annual developer conference taking place today at McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. Other news announced at F8 this year include the release of Oculus Go, new Facebook Stories sharing capabilities, and the reopening of app and bot reviews following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. See the full rundown here. The results of Facebook's research mean that its computer vision in the real world can see more specific subsets, so instead of just saying "food," it's Indian or Italian cuisine; not just "bird" but a cedar waxwing; not just "man in a white suit" but a clown.

45 comments

  1. Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm very tempted to bring a lawsuit here. I did not grant permission for this usage.

    1. Re:Copyright violation by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Informative

      You know that little checkbox you have to click after reading two librairies' worth of legalese before you can use these free online services? You agreed to almost every possible usage of your data.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re: Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Until May 26 when such consent cannot be hidden in the terms of service (in the EU).

    3. Re:Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm very tempted to bring a lawsuit here. I did not grant permission for this usage.

      Did you put something on Facebook?

      Then, I assure you, you did grant permission with all sorts of vague "in order to improve our service" or "in order to make Zuckerberg more money" type clauses.

      Stop pretending that the stuff you put on Facebook is your data. The moment you uploaded it, it became their data.

    4. Re:Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > You agreed to almost every possible usage of your data.

      Clown porn?

    5. Re: Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's funny/quaint you think your country's rules can apply overseas.

    6. Re:Copyright violation by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      Did you put something on Facebook?

      Yes, but this is Instagram....

      Yes, I know FB bought Instagram, but what if you had your agreements with IG before FB bought them....were the original IG TOS as bad as what FB does?

      Wouldn't you be held to the original TOS you signed up with?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    7. Re: Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh by they do. You watch.

    8. Re:Copyright violation by darkain · · Score: 1

      It is pretty common to have a few clauses in these types of agreements
      1) clauses may be updated at any time without notice
      2) if [company] is ever purchased by anyone, new company has the same rights that were initially granted to [company]

    9. Re:Copyright violation by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Copyright restricts nothing that is not distributed.

    10. Re: Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3) new tos notice upon login ..

    11. Re:Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Especially clown porn.

    12. Re: Copyright violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dumb amerilard. Get ready to get wrecked by the GDPR.

  2. Again with FaceBook? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What the f**k? Every 3rd story is about FaceBook? Who really cares? (Yawn...)

    1. Re:Again with FaceBook? by darkain · · Score: 3, Informative

      Whenever a large tech conference happens, there is a burst of posts about that particular company. No different than when Google, Apple, or Microsoft holds major tech conferences. This is the norm of Slashdot and wont change.

    2. Re:Again with FaceBook? by The+Fat+Bastard · · Score: 1

      Facebook is having their annual conference this week. https://www.f8.com/

    3. Re:Again with FaceBook? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yea they for sure got on stage and made a big deal about the engineer who abused his access to stalk women

    4. Re:Again with FaceBook? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      >> Facebook ... annual conference

      Well, that ought to be interesting to attend. You have a bunch of suits presenting the usual batch of mine-our-user's-data products and you have a bunch of attendees thinking "I wonder how much of this will still be around in two months." If anything, it should work to help companies negotiate better prices for the data they buy from Facebook (and we heard about Facebook's "close elevator door / erase some data" button yesterday), but I'm still not sure how the consumer is helped by any of this.

    5. Re:Again with FaceBook? by darkain · · Score: 1

      Facebook (company) is more than just Facebook (website). For instance, they were showing off some new Oculus VR stuff there. Not everyone is into VR gaming, I get that, but it is a hot topic right now that Facebook (company) is heavily involved with. That's the type of stuff at this conference as well.

    6. Re:Again with FaceBook? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      Of course you bring your press-friendly distractions, like VR headsets.

      Especially when you are dealing with a PR timebomb that has you in the sights of establishment liberals who think Facebook stole the election from Hillary, fringe conservatives annoyed that Facebook has assembled a pre-weaponized Orwellian database, and ordinary citizens worried that a Facebook is clamping down on free speech all at the same time.

    7. Re:Again with FaceBook? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "large tech conference"
      An ad company does not have tech. It has software to collect all its users.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. Birds by darkain · · Score: 1

    I love how every day we're getting closer and closer to having XKCD become reality! https://xkcd.com/1425/

    1. Re:Birds by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      Five years until they can tell who is flipping the bird in a photo? Five years until you can tell that the tiny dark splotch behind the sun-dappled leaves is a bird? Yeah...seems optimistic to me.

  4. Current capabilities by MagicM · · Score: 2

    Facebook's current "vision" capabilities are already pretty impressive. You can right-click any image in your feed and choose "Inspect element", dig down to the element, and look at the "alt" attribute to see what Facebook thinks is in that image. A sampling of my current feed:

    Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling, people standing
    Image may contain: dog
    Image may contain: car and outdoor
    Image may contain: pizza and food
    Image may contain: text

    1. Re:Current capabilities by MagicM · · Score: 1

      That should say: dig down to the element, and look at the "alt" attribute

    2. Re:Current capabilities by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      You must be easily impressed. Any 2 year old can discern a car from a fish with 100% reliability. Computers can't.

    3. Re:Current capabilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah but manufacturing and maintaining a 2 year old is much more expensive compared to a computer. You need to look at performance/cost.

    4. Re:Current capabilities by rogoshen1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well the manufacturing part is pretty simple and cheap (usually). Maintenance can be an absolute fuckmare depending on child support regulations in your jurisdiction however.

      But on an aside what's the going market rate on off-brand 2 year olds (made in china or india, as those are traditionally far cheaper than western versions)?

      One would think FOSTA/SESTA would have had dramatic effects on price, or is it still too early to tell?

    5. Re:Current capabilities by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Why does cost matter when the results are wrong?

    6. Re:Current capabilities by Drethon · · Score: 1

      You planning on providing 2 year olds to identify cars vs fish 24/7?

    7. Re:Current capabilities by skids · · Score: 1

      And now apparently, they'll be able to add such informative categories as "#fml" and "#yolo"

      --
      Someone had to do it.
    8. Re:Current capabilities by arth1 · · Score: 1

      You must be easily impressed. Any 2 year old can discern a car from a fish with 100% reliability. Computers can't.

      Given how people tag photos, I'd say that many grown-ups can't either. And I think this is the big flaw with the system; it lets just everyone tag.
      So you get dolphins tagged as "fish", raspberries tagged as "cannabis", computer cases tagged as "hard drive" and "cpu", and the flag of Ireland tagged as "Italy".
      Unless you pay good people a good salary to do a good job, you'll get crap results. Because, quite frankly, there are an awful lot of well-meaning ignoramuses out there.

    9. Re:Current capabilities by Sporkinum · · Score: 1

      I just checked a couple of pictures, and the only things it got right was that there were people in it, and outdoors. All the other stuff like count of people, what they were doing, etc. was way off.

      --
      "He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
  5. This technology will be used for stalking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See previous story.

  6. Time to muck up the works by afidel · · Score: 0

    It's time to mess with the Facebook algorithms, start a mass movement to apply nonsensical hashtags to every photo posted. It's like when I answer signup questions, I always choose the 1/1/1900 or 1/1/1970 depending on how permissive the signup form is, feed the beast with as much bogus data as possible so that their algorithms can't do anything useful.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    1. Re:Time to muck up the works by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      I apply nonsensical tags to everything on facebook. At one point it would find a face when presented with a picture of a mariposa lily so I tagged it as my face. I got a bunch of friends to do the same. I wonder if it is still confused by that.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    2. Re:Time to muck up the works by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Add in Western spy masters, political leaders, mil and gov with whistleblowers and subversive journalists. A collage to complicate and fool collection.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  7. Jian-Yang by tippen · · Score: 1

    #hotdog, #nothotdog

  8. SO its TITS and ASS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cool about tme they started showing off all the booty they been hiding

  9. Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'Thanks to our draconian terms of service that grants us the right to steal our user's content and data, we've advanced our own projects in a yet to be proven useful fashion FOR FREE!' . Facebook can suck it.

  10. FB clearly hasn't grasped the nature of GDPR by gb7djk · · Score: 1

    And neither have Instagram, Messenger and the rest of them. GDPR requires that the data subject gives explicit consent, separately, to each use of their data. This really powerful stuff and, at the same time, totally alien to FB, Google et al. It isn't even as if the words in the regulations are unclear or writing in high faluting legalese:

    Article 7.

    1.Where processing is based on consent, the controller shall be able to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data.

    2.If the data subject's consent is given in the context of a written declaration which also concerns other matters, the request for consent shall be presented in a manner which is clearly distinguishable from the other matters, in an intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language. Any part of such a declaration which constitutes an infringement of this Regulation shall not be binding.

    This is likely also to cause quite a bit of erm... inconvenience to the sellers of data. Methinks there will be much merriment amongst the legal profession in the EU over the next couple of years.

  11. Sounds like good progress, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will it correctly identify a picture of Mark Zuckerberg as a rectum?

  12. you mean no one has ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    posted and properly tagged this test image set on instagram or facebook? anything less than 100% should be considered a total failure.

  13. More specific subsets... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    not just "bird" but a cedar waxwing; not just "man in a white suit" but a clown.

    Not just "some corporate asshole" but Mark Zuckerberg.

  14. No Duh.. That's what hashtags are for.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What did you think, they were meant for you to find content?
    From the very first implementation I knew this was an instrument for classification.

    Thank you for participating in the experiment.