The system uses information from publicly available image datasets to determine if your Flickr photos were used in AI surveillance research.<\/p>\n
[Read: How this company leveraged AI to become the Netflix of Finland<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n Just enter your Flickr username, photo URL, or hashtag in the website\u2019s search bar and the tool will scan through over 3.5 million photos for your pics.<\/p>\n The search engine checks whether your photos were included in the datasets by referencing Flickr identifiers such as username and photo ID. It doesn\u2019t use any facial recognition to detect the images.<\/p>\n If it finds an exact match, the results are displayed on the screen. The images are then loaded directly from Flickr.com.<\/p>\n Exposing.ai is based on the MegaPixels art and research project, which explores the stories behind how biometric image training datasets are built and used.<\/p>\n The tool\u2019s creators said<\/a> the project is based on years of research on the tech:<\/p>\n After tracking down and analyzing hundreds of these datasets a pattern emerged: millions of images were being downloaded from Flickr.com where permissive content licenses are encouraged and biometric data is abundant. Telling the complex story of how yesterday\u2019s photographs became today\u2019s training data is part of the goal of this project.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Flickr is a logical target for the tool\u2019s launch. The photo-sharing service is regularly used in AI research, from the MegaFace database of millions of images to what Yahoo called<\/a> \u201cthe largest public multimedia collection that has ever been released.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2019, IBM released a dataset of almost a million pictures scraped from Flickr without the uploaders\u2019 consent.<\/p>\n The company said that the collection would help researchers reduce the rampant biases<\/a> of facial recognition. But it could also be used to develop powerful surveillance tech.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the dirty little secret of AI training sets,\u201d NYU School of Law professor Jason Schultz told NBC News<\/a> at the time. \u201cResearchers often just grab whatever images are available in the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n I tested out the tool on Flickr accounts that have shared photos with the public under a Creative Commons license. The second account I tried was spotted in the datasets.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there isn\u2019t too much you can do once your photos have been scraped.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not possible to remove your face from image datasets that have already been distributed, although some allow you to request removal from future releases. The Exposing.ai team said they\u2019ll soon include information about this process below your search results.<\/p>\n Exposing.AI also only works on Flickr and doesn\u2019t cover every image training dataset used for facial recognition. The creators say future versions could include more search options.<\/span><\/p>\n At this point, the tool\u2019s main power is exposing how our photos are used to develop facial recognition without our consent. Only changes to laws and company policies can prevent the practice.<\/p>\n Published February 1, 2021 \u2014 13:09 UTC <\/p>\n\n
Rapid results<\/h2>\n
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