Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Original title: "Think carefully and fear extremely!" PimEyes Steals Photos of Dead People to Train Facial Recognition Algorithms

PimEyes facial recognition search site, search for a photo can expose your information, if you want to delete photos, you must subscribe to membership, and the platform publishes photos of others without knowing the right, take photos of dead people to train algorithms.

When you search for photos of yourself on PimEyes, you'll see lots of photos of yourself and people who look just like you.

However, when this tool is trained, it does not use photos authorized by users, but facial recognition based on photos of various platforms across the network.

So after your photo is recognized, search results often show screenshots of videos from porn sites.

Not only that, but the site was also revealed that they had been stealing photos of dead people to train their algorithms.

Some people die, but they are still alive on the Internet.

Cher Scarlett is a software engineer and writer.

Recently, she suddenly discovered that pictures of her mother, her great-great-grandmother, who died long ago, and her sister, who died 18 years ago, all appeared on PimEyes.

All of these photos were uploaded by her and her family themselves to Archaestry, but the site publicly prohibits, in its terms and conditions,"the scraping of data, including photos, from Archaestry's sites and services, and the resale, reproduction, or publication of any content or information found on Archaestry."

Scarlett was shocked that not only was this a violation of Ancestory's policies, but her late family simply could not have allowed PimEyes to train their algorithms with these photos.

This sounds like the story of Henrietta Lacks: "immortal HeLa cells" have been used for decades for medical research and drug development, and are one of the most important medical achievements in centuries. But these studies were actually carried out after her death without her permission. Without her knowledge, her cells were studied, propagated, and even her genetic sequence made public.

Although these two things are not of the same magnitude. But it stands to reason that your privacy should be respected after you die.

Daniel Leufer, senior policy analyst at digital rights group Access Now, said: "While PimEyes says it won't give you the person's identity directly through their website, you can click on the image website and your name will actually appear on the website."

"When I think about how everyone's photos will be entered into the biometric identifier of facial recognition software without their knowledge or consent, I believe that no one will easily post photos to social media." Scarlett was disappointed.

"My sister is dead, and she can't come back to life. Go and get this website to take down her photos."

Scarlett said this with an allusion, because she had previously talked to this website about removing photos.

When Scarlett first heard about the app, she wanted to test out who celebrities looked like her.

She found herself somewhat similar to Britney Spears and Kate Hudson.

As she flipped through the pages, she suddenly found a photo of herself being sexually abused more than ten years ago.

Scarlett wanted to commit suicide because of this experience, so much so that her body's self-defense mechanism made her selectively forget about it.

She was devastated to see these photos on the website, but she struggled to investigate the source of these photos and found that she had to pay a membership fee to view them.

After paying, she found that these photos were scattered on various pornographic websites, even with keywords such as "abuse,""suffocation," and "torture."

What's more, to remove these photos, you must not only submit an application to identify yourself, but also pay $29.9 a month to subscribe to their service, so that you can manage search results and hide some photos that you don't want to be seen.

Scarlett kept trying to erase the photos, but there was no way to permanently erase them. She even bought PimEyes 'most expensive service, to no avail. The site says photos will still be displayed as long as they subsequently appear on links to other sites.

In other words, monthly subscription is not enough, but also have to become a distinguished annual member, regularly apply for cleaning, and each approval time is also very long.

It wasn't until April last year, when she shared her experience on Social networks, that PimEyes actually approved her removal request.

Investigating you, following you.

PimEyes can look at photos of a person and find other photos they have posted online, including photos posted everywhere on websites, blogs, news, and articles.

By piecing together information related to these images, the text of blogs, articles, and photos from work websites, people who want to investigate you can find out where you work and track you to where you live.

"Images of anyone, including children, can be searched and tracked on the Internet."

People who are abused by domestic violence will lose their sense of security; stalkers will quietly make tails that you can't shake off, like horror movies; when applying for a job or going to school, the tool can also call up all your background information, so that you have no secrets.

PimEyes has been accused of illegally processing the biometric data of millions of British citizens, arguing that it did not obtain permission from those whose images were analyzed.

However, in the face of allegations of breaches of data protection laws, PimEyes argued that it was technically impossible to know how many British citizens 'faces they had analysed, which amounted to an indirect admission that no authorisation had been obtained.

Although the platform claims that PimEyes is not designed to spy on others, the platform has no relevant measures to regulate it, so people also expressed distrust of the platform's data security department.

But PimEyes is working hard to turn the tables. They said the tool could help journalists investigate and said they were working with law enforcement and humanitarian organizations in Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States to help fight child crime, human trafficking and terrorism.

And, as mentioned above, PimEyes finally started helping women after things came to light, and started approving and deleting nude porn photos without consent.

References:

https://futurism.com/pictures-dead-people-facial-recognition-algorithm

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63544169

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Xinzhiyuan (ID: AI_era)

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