Anyone can use this powerful facial-recognition tool -- and that's a problem

[Nevilledog]

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Rachel Metz
@rachelmetz
My latest: a deep dive into PimEyes, a mysterious facial-recognition website that may be even scarier than Clearview AI, since anyone with internet access can use it.

Anyone can use this powerful facial-recognition tool — and that's a problem
You probably haven't seen PimEyes, a mysterious facial-recognition search engine, but it may have spotted you.
cnn.com
12:40 PM · May 4, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/04/tech/pimeyes-facial-recognition/index.html


(CNN Business) — You probably haven't seen PimEyes, a mysterious facial-recognition search engine, but it may have spotted you.

If you upload a picture of your face to PimEyes' website, it will immediately show you any pictures of yourself that the company has found around the internet. You might recognize all of them, or be surprised (or, perhaps, even horrified) by some; these images may include anything from wedding or vacation snapshots to pornographic images.

PimEyes is open to anyone with internet access. It's a stark contrast from Clearview AI, which became well-known for building its enormous stash of faces with images of people from social networks and limits its use to law enforcement (Clearview has said it has hundreds of such customers).

PimEyes' decision to make facial-recognition software available to the general public crosses a line that technology companies are typically unwilling to traverse, and opens up endless possibilities for how it can be used and abused.

Imagine a potential employer digging into your past, an abusive ex tracking you, or a random stranger snapping a photo of you in public and then finding you online. This is all possible through PimEyes: Though the website instructs users to search for themselves, it doesn't stop them from uploading photos of anyone. At the same time, it doesn't explicitly identify anyone by name, but as CNN Business discovered by using the site, that information may be just clicks away from images PimEyes pulls up.

*snip*

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Well, many years ago we had the Forest Hills Rapist who preyed on schoolgirls around the...

Continental Ave. subway station. The same station I used to get to work.

The composite was on the front page of the Daily News, and it was like looking into a mirror! I did take a lot of shit for a while, until they caught the guy, and was even stopped a few times by transit cops. One time I was taken down to their dungeon and damn near crapped my pants until they let me go. Every horror story about someone railroaded just because they had to clear a case ran through my mind.

The picture was one thing, but the description had a guy much older, 6 inches shorter, and with a Spanish accent. Detectives still grilled me that time, and after they let me go I ended up grateful that they seemed to be pretty good at doing their jobs.

Anyway, years later I'm in a bar with friends, and when I went to whizz, a guy comes over to them and tells them they suck for hanging out with a rapist. Most of them didn't believe it, but when I found out it was pants-shitting time.

Now that any asshole can plug a fuzzy phone picture into a website, who knows what hell we're in for...

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Wow! I'm glad that you weren't falsely arrested!

The height and accent mismatches surely helped you, but what a frightening situation!

The closest image of me that I ever saw was also a police sketch, which was displayed on the plexiglass inside a gas station that was near my workplace. The guy had robbed them about a week earlier, but that was the first time that I'd even walked inside that place.

The match was so incredibly close that I initially chuckled about it, and I almost pointed it out to the clerk. Then I imagined possible hassles from the police and I stopped myself!

I never returned to that gas station ever again, not even to pay outside at the pumps.

[ZonkerHarris]

3. I'll be keeping my Covid masks on...forever.