Did you think your photos on Google Photos were just simple digital memories? Soon, suddenly, big mistake! A former Google engineer has just launched a website that will make your hair stand on end by revealing everything thatartificial intelligence can learn from your shots.
The genesis of awareness
Vishnu Mohandas is not a rebel without a cause like most of us. This software engineer based in Bengaluru, India, courageously left his job at Google in 2020 after discovering that the company was collaborating with the Pentagon on military AI projects. He also stopped using Google Photos, very concerned about the potential use of his personal data to train AI systems, even without a direct link to military projects.
What they actually see in your photos
To demonstrate the breadth of Google's analytics capabilities, Mohandas and his team created TheySeeyourphotos.com. The concept is as clever as it is creepy: the site uses Google's own computer vision APIs to analyze the photos you submit.
I just tested its system with a few simple selfies of myself and the AI did an exhaustive analysis, identifying not only the elements in the photo but also my mood, and going so far as to deduce my social class, and even the time of day using image metadata.
Implications for your privacy
This demonstration obviously raises questions about the future of our visual data because as Mohandas explains, a simple photo of a child taken today could reveal their emotions, preferences and behaviors and thus be used decades later by advertisers, dating sites, employers, or even industries that don't yet exist.
Secure alternatives exist
Faced with these concerns, Mohandas developed Entity (which means “mine” in Malayalam, its native language), a photo storage service Open source for transparency, and end-to-end encrypted for confidentiality. And there are obviously others like Piwigo which I have already told you about here.
Here are some practical tips to regain control of your data:
- Audit your privacy settings on Google Photos
- Disable all analytics features non-essential
- Export your data regularly to have a backup
- Consider Alternatives respectful of privacy
- Disable metadata saving in your smartphone
- And of course, think before you share sensitive photos
The future of our personal data
While some of you might view these concerns as paranoid, it is obviously impossible to predict how this data will be used in the future… And although Google says it does not sell Google Photos content to third parties or use it for advertising purposes, the fact that the data is not end-to-end encrypted leaves the door open to unforeseeable future uses.
To go further
In short, if you want to test for yourself what AI can deduce from your photos, go to TheySeeyourphotos.com.
Source
