7 ms·

AI Anonymizer – use virtual faces to secure your identity

31 points by realpanzer 6y ago

Icons8 6y ago
Founder here. Thanks for featuring! There was an improvised AMA in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208704 I'd be glad to answer the questions here as well.
- Icons8 6y ago
  Some of the questions: How is it done? The images are pregenerated: 2.6M to be precise, all of them are here: https://generated.photos/faces https://generated.photos/faces Technical challenges of better resemblance We could either pre-generate (see the first comment - it’s an accurate guess), or generate just in time. The first is way easier - same architecture, more storage (we are moving from instance’s storage to S3 so it will be an easy step). On-demand generation would be much more expensive as you have to have a GPU server ready, and queue requests. We have it with https://icons8.com/upscaler https://icons8.com/upscaler ; it’s a bit of work and expense. Additionally, you have to make it a paid service. Any ideas who could pay for that? Our usual customers are https://generated.photos/use-cases https://generated.photos/use-cases Brad Pitt is not blonde It definitely has some fitting issues; Brad Pitt is a good example as he dyes his hair. I've googled his hair situation so you don't have to. He most probably has gray hair, dyed dark, then highlighted. That's a challenge huh! As a result, you can feel some of these guys manipulated hair color: https://i.imgur.com/bC6AxXO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/bC6AxXO.jpg Anyway, I had better luck with Angelina Jolie. Hairwise, her hair looks also toned, but our dataset has way more colored women: https://i.imgur.com/WmTzRAZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WmTzRAZ.jpg Spam bots have a new face On the boring side, it’s probably not worth it. Generated photography is detectable. A trained eye could spot it; big social media have models trained to a lot it. Scraping a real life dataset makes more sense to me. Moreover, there are tons of ready ones. Instead, here are are some of the other uses invented by our customers https://generated.photos/use-cases https://generated.photos/use-cases
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
piracy1 6y ago
This is cool. I had been watching this guy on youtube who wears a mask in all his vids because he reports on cartels and wishes to not be murdered. It got me wondering if the new age Brian Krebs of YouTube would use something like this to maintain anonymity but still have a face the audience associates with them. The future is trippy.
- Icons8 6y ago
  Right! Or Google Maps — enough of people with the heads in a cloud.
noodlesUK 6y ago
I just tried it, I don’t know what your AI thinks I look like, but it’s decided I’m a kid.. I’m in my mid-20s ;)
- shannifin 6y ago
  In my mid-30s and the majority of faces I'm getting look like toddlers
  - Icons8 6y ago
    I’d like to see the source photo if you don’t mind. I’ve discovered that in any unclear situation it shows toddlers. In particular, it happens when the camera distorts the perspective, such as too close or shot with an unusual angle. Precisely, selfies are often fish eyed. I wonder if a plain, well lit portrait changes it. It must not be essentially a passport photo, but a passport photo would work too. Of course, that is something to think about in the future releases. So sad, Anonymizer is an experiment made for fun. I wonder if it has a product/market fit. Thoughts?
zwaps 6y ago
Very cool, however now I found out I am apparently someone who looks unusual compared to the average person. In particular, I have naturally blond (very blond) hair, blue-green eyes, but a black beard. This seems to confuse the AI. None of the pictures it generates look even remotely like me, and I even got a broken one (long-haired ones, where the hair fizzles out into AI artifacts). Now, just to figure out how I can use my AI-breaking power face to mess with facial recognition technology? ;-)
johnisgood 6y ago
> Upload your photo and discover look-a-like generated photos. No thank you. I would rather use https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ instead. I do not want to expose myself to protect myself. Please think about it, it is absurd. You do not protect your privacy by first giving up privacy by trusting total strangers with your photo. Probably could use https://generated.photos/faces https://generated.photos/faces as well. Such an anonymizer. You probably use your IP, you upload a photo of yourself to someone's server, and God knows what happens to all this. Just to... anonymize yourself. First step to anonymize yourself: do not upload a photo of yourself to random websites.
- m34 6y ago
  Agreed. Anectodal ofc: I thought about creating something similar - an app that would take my headshot and randomly alter metrics like eye distance and other general ratios etc for use as profile images for various social networks, thinking it might improve recognizability for people I actually know / have met. However, I quickly came to the realization that the metrics I'd try to alter would probably not be sufficient and reveal enough information that the whole thing would be rendered moot. A nice first step to remediate trust (or at least shift trust relationship to other parties) would be for vendors to implement highly restricted sandbox models (i.e. not allowing _any_ network access and restrict/alter ways of in- and output, like adding noise and artefacts to image data that can leave the app e.g. via share/save to camera roll).
  - Icons8 6y ago
    I see your concern and it’s valid. We don’t store anything, but you probably need more warranties than that. I don’t think it’s the best way to hide. Generated photos are detectable after all, and using a generated photo raises a flag. But I say it’s good enough for most cases of everyday life: * Uber drivers chasing attractive customers online * Jealous ex * Airbnb and coach surfing * Classifieds encounters to sell a bike, etc.
sinuhe69 6y ago
Isn’t that not kind of scam? It said you can use it for free and then charge 2$ for each photo when you want to download them all while using your photos as free data to train and enhance the network itself.
- Icons8 6y ago
  It's not. You can use it for free, just attribute it. $2.99 gives you a double resolution. We don't use these photos to train.

31 points by realpanzer 6y ago

Founder here. Thanks for featuring! There was an improvised AMA in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208704 I'd be glad to answer the questions here as well.

Icons8 6y ago
Some of the questions: How is it done? The images are pregenerated: 2.6M to be precise, all of them are here: https://generated.photos/faces https://generated.photos/faces Technical challenges of better resemblance We could either pre-generate (see the first comment - it’s an accurate guess), or generate just in time. The first is way easier - same architecture, more storage (we are moving from instance’s storage to S3 so it will be an easy step). On-demand generation would be much more expensive as you have to have a GPU server ready, and queue requests. We have it with https://icons8.com/upscaler https://icons8.com/upscaler ; it’s a bit of work and expense. Additionally, you have to make it a paid service. Any ideas who could pay for that? Our usual customers are https://generated.photos/use-cases https://generated.photos/use-cases Brad Pitt is not blonde It definitely has some fitting issues; Brad Pitt is a good example as he dyes his hair. I've googled his hair situation so you don't have to. He most probably has gray hair, dyed dark, then highlighted. That's a challenge huh! As a result, you can feel some of these guys manipulated hair color: https://i.imgur.com/bC6AxXO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/bC6AxXO.jpg Anyway, I had better luck with Angelina Jolie. Hairwise, her hair looks also toned, but our dataset has way more colored women: https://i.imgur.com/WmTzRAZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WmTzRAZ.jpg Spam bots have a new face On the boring side, it’s probably not worth it. Generated photography is detectable. A trained eye could spot it; big social media have models trained to a lot it. Scraping a real life dataset makes more sense to me. Moreover, there are tons of ready ones. Instead, here are are some of the other uses invented by our customers https://generated.photos/use-cases https://generated.photos/use-cases
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

piracy1 6y ago

This is cool. I had been watching this guy on youtube who wears a mask in all his vids because he reports on cartels and wishes to not be murdered. It got me wondering if the new age Brian Krebs of YouTube would use something like this to maintain anonymity but still have a face the audience associates with them. The future is trippy.

Icons8 6y ago
Right! Or Google Maps — enough of people with the heads in a cloud.

noodlesUK 6y ago

I just tried it, I don’t know what your AI thinks I look like, but it’s decided I’m a kid.. I’m in my mid-20s ;)

shannifin 6y ago
In my mid-30s and the majority of faces I'm getting look like toddlers
- Icons8 6y ago
  I’d like to see the source photo if you don’t mind. I’ve discovered that in any unclear situation it shows toddlers. In particular, it happens when the camera distorts the perspective, such as too close or shot with an unusual angle. Precisely, selfies are often fish eyed. I wonder if a plain, well lit portrait changes it. It must not be essentially a passport photo, but a passport photo would work too. Of course, that is something to think about in the future releases. So sad, Anonymizer is an experiment made for fun. I wonder if it has a product/market fit. Thoughts?

zwaps 6y ago

Very cool, however now I found out I am apparently someone who looks unusual compared to the average person. In particular, I have naturally blond (very blond) hair, blue-green eyes, but a black beard. This seems to confuse the AI. None of the pictures it generates look even remotely like me, and I even got a broken one (long-haired ones, where the hair fizzles out into AI artifacts). Now, just to figure out how I can use my AI-breaking power face to mess with facial recognition technology? ;-)

johnisgood 6y ago

> Upload your photo and discover look-a-like generated photos. No thank you. I would rather use https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ instead. I do not want to expose myself to protect myself. Please think about it, it is absurd. You do not protect your privacy by first giving up privacy by trusting total strangers with your photo. Probably could use https://generated.photos/faces https://generated.photos/faces as well. Such an anonymizer. You probably use your IP, you upload a photo of yourself to someone's server, and God knows what happens to all this. Just to... anonymize yourself. First step to anonymize yourself: do not upload a photo of yourself to random websites.

m34 6y ago
Agreed. Anectodal ofc: I thought about creating something similar - an app that would take my headshot and randomly alter metrics like eye distance and other general ratios etc for use as profile images for various social networks, thinking it might improve recognizability for people I actually know / have met. However, I quickly came to the realization that the metrics I'd try to alter would probably not be sufficient and reveal enough information that the whole thing would be rendered moot. A nice first step to remediate trust (or at least shift trust relationship to other parties) would be for vendors to implement highly restricted sandbox models (i.e. not allowing _any_ network access and restrict/alter ways of in- and output, like adding noise and artefacts to image data that can leave the app e.g. via share/save to camera roll).
- Icons8 6y ago
  I see your concern and it’s valid. We don’t store anything, but you probably need more warranties than that. I don’t think it’s the best way to hide. Generated photos are detectable after all, and using a generated photo raises a flag. But I say it’s good enough for most cases of everyday life: * Uber drivers chasing attractive customers online * Jealous ex * Airbnb and coach surfing * Classifieds encounters to sell a bike, etc.

sinuhe69 6y ago

Isn’t that not kind of scam? It said you can use it for free and then charge 2$ for each photo when you want to download them all while using your photos as free data to train and enhance the network itself.

Icons8 6y ago
It's not. You can use it for free, just attribute it. $2.99 gives you a double resolution. We don't use these photos to train.