Programmer Claims To Have Built A Facial Recognition System Identifying Porn Actors, Sparking Privacy Concerns
June 4, 2019A German-based user of Weibo claims to be the creator of an algorithm that uses facial recognition software to match porn actors to social media photos, Motherboard reports.
His post went viral in China and has since been translated into English by Yiqin Fu, a PhD student at Stanford, and verified by Motherboard.
As of right now, these are just boasts – the programmer has yet to share any solid proof – but he claims to have already identified over 100,000 women through the algorithm and various social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Weibo.
The program was designed, he says, so that people can find out whether or not their partner has ever acted in porn – but, as many have pointed out, it not only calls into question ones right to privacy but also highlights deep-rooted misogyny within the digital space.
“This is horrendous and a pitch-perfect example of how these systems, globally, enable male dominance,” writer and activist Soraya Chemaly wrote on Twitter.
“Surveillance, impersonation, extortion, misinformation all happen to women first and then move to the public sphere, where, once men are affected, it starts to get attention.”
As you may have already noticed, the programmer claims to have cross-referenced more than 100,000 women using the pictures they’ve put online – with zero mention of any men.
Indeed, the algorithm appears to have been specifically designed to identify female performers. In response to the backlash, the programmer has U-turned on his initial reasoning for building the algorithm. He now says it was designed for women, enabling them to find out if they are on any porn sites and to take the necessary action to have the videos taken off the platform. He has also said he would be open to the idea of developing a version for male porn stars in the future.
Aside from an empty GitLab page, there is no solid proof backing up his claims. There is no code and he hasn’t opened up the database to outside queries, for example, so we don’t know if this algorithm does exist. But we know it can, and that can be pretty terrifying.
We have already seen DeepFakes that plaster the faces of famous women onto the bodies of porn performers. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has announced plans to adopt a Black Mirror-esque “Social Credit” system using AI and facial recognition technology by 2020.
Whether the programmer has achieved what he says he has or not, privacy advocates have expressed unease that an algorithm like this could, now or in the future, result in targeted harassment of those in the porn industry and out.
[H/T: Motherboard]
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