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Real Life Ads Are Taking Scary Inspiration From Social Media (medium.com)
Advertisements in the real world are becoming more technologically sophisticated, integrating facial recognition, location data, artificial intelligence, and other powerful tools that are more commonly associated with your mobile phone. Welcome to the new age of digital marketing. From a report: During this year's Fashion Week in New York, a digital billboard ad for New Balance used A.I. technology to detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits. A billboard advertisement for the Chevy Malibu recently targeted drivers on Interstate 88 in Chicago by identifying the brand of vehicle they were driving, then serving ads touting its own features in comparison. And Bidooh, a Manchester-based startup that admits it was inspired by Minority Report, is using facial recognition to serve ads through its billboards in the U.K. and other parts of Europe as well as South Korea. According to its website, Bidooh allows advertisers to target people based on criteria like age, gender, ethnicity, hair color, clothing color, height, body shape, perceived emotion, and the presence of glasses, sunglasses, beards, or mustaches.
We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. Things have progressed as you'd expect: In 2016, another Times report described how Clear Channel Outdoor Americas had partnered with companies including AT&T to track people via their mobile phones. The ads could determine the gender and average age of people passing different billboards and determine whether they visited a store after seeing an ad.
We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. Things have progressed as you'd expect: In 2016, another Times report described how Clear Channel Outdoor Americas had partnered with companies including AT&T to track people via their mobile phones. The ads could determine the gender and average age of people passing different billboards and determine whether they visited a store after seeing an ad.
This could be what takes ad-blocking mainstream. Imagine driving down the road and the billboard suddenly changes to show you the new Ford SUX Rockhard, with the slogan "IS YOURS BIG ENOUGH?" and a young lady dressed in some very specific fetish gear draped over it. Then it photoshops your contorted face behind the wheel and you curse yourself for not unplugging your webcam before visiting xHamster.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Would the GDPR actually help with most of those? If the billboard isn't sending anything back, but is instead simply processing your appearance locally and then acting locally on that information, is there any actual collection of data, so far as the GDPR is concerned? What about if the sensor that scans you is a black box that only outputs booleans corresponding to your traits (Beard: Yes. Long hair: No. Sunglasses: Yes.) and that even that data only ever stays on-device and never leaves to go to anyone's database? If those are considered a form of data collection that requires disclosure and consent, then how is taking any picture in public legal?
Honest questions. I'm not in the EU and and don't do business there, so I don't know the ins-and-outs of the GDPR, but it seemed to me, based on my limited understanding, that none of these were necessarily running afoul of the GDPR.
If you don't like advertisements which track you, than fight back: just make horribly disgusted facial expressions every time you look at an ad! It's a totally brilliant tactic, because if enough people follow this advice, these horribly unethical and creepy companies will eventually just give up and stop advertising altogether!
....... Oh, and no, your mommy's scold about your face "sticking that way" is absolutely not true, I promise! The ugly expressions might eventually become a habit, and those expressions might cause permanent frown wrinkles over the course of time, which could ultimately make you look like a genuinely bitter old codger in your later years in life, thus entirely ruining the effect on those rare occasions when you actually try to smile... but trust me: that's totally not the same thing.
/s
if you don't want your brain pumped full of advertisements just don't walk into the advertising zones. Now if you'll excuse me it's time for a smoke and a shot of popsi. Ah, the circle of consumption...
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree."
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This is one of the more cyberpunk tidbits I've heard within the last 3 months, but some tattoos were really throwing off facial recognition. And they found that you could paint your face and effectively fool the system into no longer recognizing your face as a face. So all that really weird face makeup you see in Blade-runner, cyberpunk2020, and Shadowrun could retro-actively be argued as a means to avoid being tagged and identified.
Hmm, perhaps I need to develop a Silly Walk to fool the cameras.
Either that, or act like I"m trying to avoid rhythmic walking patterns that can attract sand worms.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Augmented reality. Now available in the The Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses!
detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits
If the 'highlighting' included displaying a photo or video of the person wearing that outfit, wouldn't that be unauthorized for-profit use of that person's image?
Yeah, I was wondering that too.
If you want to use my image to sell stuff, you can compensate me financially for that, thanks. And get my consent too.
" highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits"
I just went to the corner to get some beer, I thought the pajamas were good enough for that distance.
Biometric data can only be processed with explicit permission from the subject. It would have to be opt-in.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC