Researchers release free AI-powered Fawkes image privacy tool for 'cloaking' faces

DP Review ^ | August 11, 2020 | Brittany Hillen

[Sergio]

Researchers with the University of Chicago's SAND Lab have detailed the development of a new tool called Fawkes that subtly alters images in a way that makes them unusable for facial recognition. The tool comes amid growing concerns about privacy and an editorial detailing the secret scraping of billions of online images to create facial recognition models.

Put simply, Fawkes is a cloaking tool that modifies images in ways imperceptible to the human eye. The idea is that anyone can download the tool, which has been made publicly available, to first cloak their images before posting them online. The name was inspired by Guy Fawkes, the mask of whom was popularized by the movie V for Vendetta.

The Fawkes algorithm doesn't prevent a facial recognition algorithm from analyzing a face in a digital image -- instead, it teaches the algorithm a 'highly distorted version' of what that person's face looks like without triggering errors; it cannot, the researchers say, be 'easily detected' by the machines, either.

[Sergio]

This would be of use to those who still post photos of themselves on social media, and it's free. I like the idea of "poisoning" the system making facial recognition as a whole, less viable. It would be like Freeping a survey.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Bkmrk

[rktman]

Uh, stoopid masks already doing that face cloaking thing? 😷😀

[BenLurkin]

Ping

[CondorFlight]

Should be included as standard software on all new computers.

[Sergio]

True dat! LOL!

[Sergio]

Not a bad idea.

[SunkenCiv]

...When I had you to myself, I didn't want you around Those pretty faces always made you stand out in a crowd But someone picked you from the bunch, one glance was all it took Now it's much too late for me to take a second look...

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[DEPcom]

Went to the link to download then saw the list of names that work on this program. All Chinese names. I did not install.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Yikes.

[Sergio]

I was not aware of that, thanks for the heads up.

That turns this into a “frog & scorpion” kinda thing, doesn’t it?

[KC_Lion]

Oh, nice...

[Bratch]

[Pollard]

Perhaps they made it for the folks back home in china since the CCP is big on the facial recognition thing.

Available for Mac and Windows only so it does me no good as I run Linux - Kubuntu

[wally_bert]

He was in a good episode of Justice League way back when.

[Sergio]

Is that “The Question”?

[Sergio]

The download page shows a Linux binary which might work with your version of Linux.

[zeugma]

Went to the link to download then saw the list of names that work on this program. All Chinese names. I did not install.

your reaction is understandable, but I suspect that there are some chinese folk, especially those in Hong Kong with a real interest in subverting facial recognition. If it's open source, then likely any nastiness will be rooted out.

[Bratch]

[Bikkuri]

Fawkes
Downloads and Source Code - Version 0.3 (July 2020)

Download Linux Binary (v0.3)


Source code included, so it can be checked!
:^D