Artificial intelligence is everywhere, even in photo analysis. A recently put online platform shows what a stupid cliché can reveal about you.
Your photos are chattier than you might think. With the help of AI, it is now quite easy to extract tons of information from a single snapshot. If these tools can be useful for describing images to visually impaired Internet users, for example, they can also be used to collect more or less personal information about people who are not careful. This is what the “They see your photos” site shows with disconcerting simplicity.
One photo, a thousand information
Put online by EnteIO, a company that markets an encrypted alternative to Google Photos, the platform allows you to see what Google technologies are likely to learn from your photos. Using Google Cloud's computer vision tools, the site finely analyzes a photo to extract as much relevant information as possible about the person behind or in front of the lens.
Thus, from a simple selfie, the site is likely to guess your ethnic origins, your social background as well as your age or your favorite occupations. Obviously, the platform uses the metadata contained in the photo (location, camera model, time, etc.), but also scans the photo itself to try to extract as much information as possible on the subject. . Not to stop there, the AI also allows itself to make a small comment on the composition of the photo and the colors and elements present.
A thousand photos, millions of information
Obviously, the site is a clever publicity stunt for Ente, which seeks to stand out from Google by offering an end-to-end encrypted photo hosting solution. So the approach is not completely disinterested. Nevertheless, it offers a fairly striking insight into what a machine is capable of deducing from a simple photo. It's easy to imagine the profile that a service like this would be able to build with a few hundred or a few thousand photos in memory. As for whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, everyone sees noon at their door.
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It is important to note that while Ente promises in its data use policy not to keep any photos or information beyond the time necessary for processing, “Third parties, such as Google, OpenStreetMap (OSM), Sentry and PostHog may collect and store data in accordance with their respective privacy policies.» If you don't prefer to submit real photos of yourself to the site, you can still see what the tool gives with demo photos made available.
