Two Harvard students have created a demonstration of how smart glasses can use facial recognition technology to instantly reveal personal data such as the name, telephone number and address of whoever stands in front of them and can be registered. The most striking thing is that it uses widely available consumer technology, such as glasses Ray-Ban of Goaland public databases, to ‘dox’ other people.
The term ‘dox’ comes from ‘dox’, an abbreviation of ‘documents’. It refers to the practice of revealing and publicly disseminate personal and private information of a personsuch as your full name, address, telephone number, place of work or even financial data, without your consent.
Anh Phu Nguyenone of the two students, published a video showing the technology in action and which has been echoed by 404 Media. Nicknamed I-XRAYthe technology works by using the ability of Meta’s smart glasses to stream live video to Instagram.
A program that runs on a computer is responsible for monitor that transmission and use artificial intelligence to identify faces. These photos are entered into public databases to find names, addresses, phone numbers and even family members. That information then sent to an app on the phone developed by Nguyen and Caine Ardayfiothe other student.
In the demo, you can see both of them using the glasses to identify several classmatestheir addresses and the names of their relatives in real time. Elsewhere in the video, Nguyen and Ardayfio They talk on public transport with strangers whom they pretend to know based on the personal, but public, information about them that they access.
Are we ready for a world where our data is exposed at a glance? @CaineArdayfio and I offer an answer to protect yourself here:https://t.co/LhxModhDpkpic.twitter.com/Oo35TxBNtD
— AnhPhu Nguyen (@AnhPhuNguyen1) September 30, 2024
Facial recognition technology has been very accurate for a long time and what I-XRAY does is leverage a set of existing technologies. It is based in part on PimEyeswhich The New York Times described in 2022 as an “alarmingly accurate” facial search engine that “anyone can use.” What’s new in Nguyen and Ardayfio’s demonstration is how this technology is combines with a consumer gadget that can be used discreetly and is easy to access.
‘The purpose of building this tool It is not for misuse, and we are not launching it’write Nguyen and Ardafiyo in the publication in which they explain the project. The students point out that their objective is to raise awareness that All this is not a dystopian future; It is already possible with existing technology. In particular, they point out that I-XRAY is unique because the large language models behind the artificial intelligences allow work automaticallyestablishing relationships between names and photos from various data sources.
Facial recognition in Spain
Could this technology be used in Spain? It would be illegal, since the European Artificial Intelligence Regulation does not allow the use of biometric identification systems in real time in public spaces. But this does not mean that facial recognition is not used in Spain.
The State Security Forces and Corps have been using the program since the summer of 2023. ABISacronym for automatic biometric identification system. ABIS uses artificial intelligence to determine faces in an image and match them with the people of whom there are records, and has since been used in more than 400 police investigationsaccording to El País. As it is not a system that processes images in real time, escapes the prohibition of the European Artificial Intelligence Regulation.