The new owner of a website which claims it can find every photo of you available online has spoken out following backlash.
AI technology has experienced a major boom in recent years, allowing people to turn themselves in cartoon avatars, plagiarise their homework and analyse complex data within seconds.
So, what's the catch?
Advert
As the title of this article suggests, artificial intelligence can be used - and has been used - to achieve more malevolent purposes.
Now, we're not quite at the stage of evil robot overlords roaming the streets - who remembers that Simpsons episode which predicted that iPods enslaved humanity? - but AI is already capable of achieving some pretty terrible things.
One example is a website named PimEyes - which claims to be able to find every image of you which is available on the internet.
Similar to tools such as Google's Reverse Image Search, all you need to do is upload a photo of your face and PimEyes will do the work in locating every other image featuring your face across the web.
Unsurprisingly, PimEyes has since been met with widespread concern, with fears the technology could become invaluable for stalkers - prompting complaints from privacy campaign groups such as the UK's Big Brother Watch as well as privacy watchdogs in the US and Germany.
Advert
What has PimEyes said in response to the backlash?
Originally founded by a Polish start-up in 2017, PimEyes is now owned by Georgian academic Giorgi Gobronidze - and he's hoping to give the brand a better public image.
Speaking about the future of PimEyes in a 2022 interview with German language outlet netzpolitik, Gobronidze explained that he wanted to make the website 'less attractive' to stalkers.
"When we acquired this project, I was very concerned, to put it mildly, because I know about the capacity of the technology," he explained.
Advert
Since the acquisition of PimEyes by Gobronidze, the site is now situated behind a paywall, which means the site's date is no longer openly accessible to anyone on the internet.
The academic also states that people have the ability to ' opt-out' from the database, adding in the interview that 10,000 takedowns had been performed at that time.
"If I am stalking someone I will do it with or without PimEyes. It is the user who is the stalker, not the search engine," Gobronidze argued, adding that accounts found to be undertaking 'suspicious' activity are banned from the platform.
"Yes, we have to ensure that the risks are minimised, this is our responsibility. But there is also the responsibility of the user."
Topics: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, AI
Brenna Cooper