The website shows you what Google’s AI sees in your photos; test yourself

What does Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) interpret when you store images in the company’s photo service? A software engineer who previously worked for the search giant used his knowledge in this field to create an awareness campaign that demonstrates just this.

As a result, the website where they see your photos is a very basic offer page. In it you send a photo to the system or choose one of the samples and wait for the result.

What the service does is store the image on Google’s cloud storage service and use Google Vision API to generate text description of your content.

platform Creates three paragraphs covering setting, lighting, framing, and even details Elements such as clothing, facial expression and the mood of the photo.

But what’s the problem?

The creator of the application “They see your photos” is an engineer Vishnu MohandasHe left his position at the Google Assistant division after opposing the company’s partnerships with military institutions in the United States. From then on, Mohandas opened his own company focused on storing photos with privacy and security.

According to him, Google Vision shows How AI interprets certain elements of a photo subjectively and sometimes with problematic bias. One of the photos his family sent to the service led the service to note that the Casio F-91W watch his wife was wearing was “commonly associated with Islamist terrorists.”

The fear created by the association led it to create a website to raise public awareness on this issue. Photos saved to the service are “read” and interpreted in a wide variety of ways by the company. Additionally, the idea is to also show: How much can an AI company learn about you? from a single file.

Mohandas’ company, Ente, sells an image storage service with privacy and encryption. Even that He accused Google of making it difficult for the startup’s app to appear in the Android Play StoreThe brand claimed that it did not comply with some of the rules of the platform.

What does Google say?

A company spokesperson contacted wired He declined to comment on the matter but referred his query to the Google Photos support site.

It is stated there the service is used only to train AI models that help manage albums and librariesWithout selling this content to third parties or using it for advertising purposes. Access images and create descriptions cannot be blocked by the userin accordance with the terms of service and the absence of end-to-end encryption of exchanged data.