In the age of internet, and high price we have to pay for privacy of our data, it is crucial to think about personal information beyond simple text. Voices? Faces? Fingerprint? DNA? All of these are crucial personally identifiable data and protecting these is equally important. I never tagged internet privacy with my face. For me, privacy was all about my activity on the internet.

A new scare settled into me, while watching a couple of video by Vox titled “What facial recognition steals from us” and “The most urgent thread of DeepFakes isn’t politics”. The first video sheds light into the facial recognition technology and how it is used. It also talks about how it potentially can be misused. The second video sheds light on AI based fabrication of fake videos that look and feel real.

Isn’t it amazing to remember the special moments we have shared with our family and friend? Google Photos makes the job easier for you by grouping old photos and periodically presenting them to us. Have you see the “Spotlight on …” by Google Photos? It’s right there in your app. I am sure you would have gone over the library section of Google Photos to checkout photos of just one person. Well these are examples of Face Recognition technology and its everywhere. Facebook tagging photos being another example.

Facial Recognition has empowered systems to automatically find photos of the same person and link those with other personally identifiable data of that person. The video explains how facial recognition works and how it is getting better over time. That forces me to ask a question that am I anonymous anymore? How far are we from a time that we google searching my photo reveals all the information about me?

Do you remember the feeling, that someone is watching you? That feeling would always make me uncomfortable and mess with my head. At times it has scared me to death. What if that feeling came from a new by CCTV camera where the system was able to facially recognise me and was able to track my movement? If not, how much safe time we have until it becomes a reality? 350 million images are uploaded to facebook everyday. 95 million to instagram. Each image making the facial recognition technology better everyday. It is us who us fuelling the technologies that potentially will be used against us.

The second topic of DeepFake gave me the chills. It got me instantly thinking worried for my near and dear ones. Some of my friends are overly protective about their photos, others not so much. But each one of them are protective about personal photos or sensitive photographs. Either they reject the idea of it or take extra precaution to keep them safe. Deepfakes just opens a new dimension for malicious intensions. Briefly, the concept is to take a bunch of photos of the same person and simulate expressions and movement with their face. This can then be used to swap faces in existing videos or create new fake video from scratch.

Suddenly, the thing we are over protective about has become reality with some photos that can be found on the internet. With advancement in technology, these fake video will look and sound more real. Sometime ago a friend of mine shared a video in our group. In the video a person was standing absolutely still but the face was trying to lip sync with the background music. The background music was a popular song with some funny lyrics. The video looked unrealistic and it was easy to figure out that it was some AI generated video. Everyone found it amusing and laughed at it. Later our friend told us that the video was created in a mobile app by uploading one photo of that person. Back then, I didn’t know what DeepFake was, but that was my first encounter with DeepFake. At that time as well, it couldn’t stop myself from thinking the implications such a technology can have on our lives.

You can argue that this technology has existed for long being used by VFX artists in movies etc. I agree, but as the technology becomes simpler to use, it becomes simpler to misuse. Videos like the one my friend created only fuels the technology to get better.

Do you see the irony yet? We fuel the advancements of technology that can potentially harm us. But everything isn’t a bane. Like a coin, there are 2 sides to everything. Facial Recognition and DeepFakes have applications in making our lives better. Catching criminals and creating stunning movies being a couple of examples.

Technology will always improve, whether we like it or not. It is a necessity for growth. It’s important to ask questions of misuse and design counter technologies to prevent misuse. But since I am not a genius what option do I have? As of yet, our only option is to be more cautious.