In spite of some recent mistakes, Google clearly takes privacy very seriously. How else can you explain going above and beyond by providing privacy protection to not just people, but their pets?
Actually, this identity-protected critter is just “collateral protection” thanks to Google’s overachieving face recognition algorithm. In fact, I’ve heard of Google Street View’s algorithm protecting the privacy of plenty of non-humans, from people in billboards to even Colonel Sanders on the KFC logo. Recently discovered a new one that’s a little more interesting; an elephant!
Take a look:
You can check it out for yourself in Google Street View if you don’t believe me.
My first thought when I saw this was, how cool is it that they were able to catch an Elephant by the side of the road in South Africa? My second thought was did Google really blur out that elephant’s face?
It made me wonder what other kind of faces Google’s Street View algorithm might be blurring.
In Google’s own words:
We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images. This means that if one of our images contains an identifiable face (for example that of a passer-by on the sidewalk) or an identifiable license plate, our technology will automatically blur it out, meaning that the individual or the vehicle cannot be identified. If our detectors missed something, you can easily let us know. [source]
It seems their face-blurring algorithm must focus primarily on the eyes, right? The mouth and nose on the elephant don’t look anything like a human’s or even a dog’s, yet its face was blurred. The way I understand it, most face recognition software uses a large database of face images to compare “landmark features” to one another – things like the eyes, nose and mouth – and generate rules for what these things should look like. It looks at things like distances apart, color, contrast and a whole host of other variables and does it’s best to guess what’s going on in the photo you’re asking it to find a face in.
With that in mind, it doesn’t seem quite so odd that a dog staring straight into the camera might trigger enough matches to convince Google it’s a weird-looking human face… But an elephant? What about a dolphin, whale or turtle?
Anyone knowledgable about face-blurring out there care to chime-in?
Also, if you find any interesting examples of non-human faces being blurred-out on Google Street View, you should submit them to my Flickr Group I started for this very occasion – Collateral Privacy.
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