AI Researchers Create 'Privacy Filter' That Disrupts Facial Recognition Technology

University of Toronto researchers have designed an algorithm to disrupt facial recognition technology. The past few months have witnessed a mainstream groundswell around security and data privacy, embodied most notably in news of Cambridge Analytica's data-collection tactics and the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before the U.S. senate. One major form of data emerges from facial recognition technology, which uses algorithms to identify us based on facial feature points. Every time you upload a photo to Facebook, Instagram, or otherwise, you give these learning systems another data point around your face -- and anybody else in the picture with you -- as well as metadata such as phone type and location. To address this problem, researchers at University of Toronto, led by Professor Parham Aarabi and graduate student Avishek Bose, have developed an algorithm to dynamically disrupt this technology.