We have been using computerised facial recognition since 1969 when three Japanese scientists detected the first human face using an algorithm. Recently, research from the Max-Planck Institute found that obscuring your face doesn’t hide you from facial recognition systems – as only ten fully visible examples of a person’s face were needed to identify a blurred image with 91.5 per cent accuracy.
Read more: How to use camouflage to thwart facial recognition
To fight back against the way our faces are being used, particularly in commercial and retail spaces, artist and technologist Adam Harvey wants to create clothing that overwhelms and confuses facial recognition systems so they can’t tell the difference between clothes and their wearer.
Named the Hyperface project, Harvey has designed print patterns for clothes and textiles, which appear to have facial features – eyes, mouth, nose, etc - so computers will interpret these features as a face.
This would overload computer recognition algorithms “with what it wants, oversaturating an area with faces to divert the faze of the computer vision algorithm,” said Harvey, speaking a the Chaos Communications Congress hacking conference in Hamburg recently.
Harvey has created these new facial patterns in conjunction with the design studio Hyphen Labs. He wants this to: “modify the environment around you, whether it’s someone next to you, whether you’re wearing it, maybe around your head or in a new way.”
A pattern like the one above, when worn, would give a computer about 1,200 possible facial detections, according to Harvey.
As a designer, Harvey has been warning people of the dangers of facial recognition software and how to subvert it for the past few years. His previous project, CV Dazzle, was a camouflage that prevented computers from recognising faces. Speaking to WIRED about the project, he said the T-zone is, “probably the most focused-on area in facial recognition,” so this was the place to start when masking your face.
Bring hair down across the eye line and use eyeshadow to disguise contours. In addition, lipstick and eyeshadow amplify key features, making your face easier to recognise. Avoid these products if you want to fool computer vision.
With the advent of the IP bill coming into law later this year, privacy is a hot topic. Whether that’s protecting the information about yourself online or shielding yourself from a camera scanning your face in a retail store, expect to see more attempts to reclaim our privacy in 2017.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
