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Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

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Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#11
post #8

Why are we building the technology of a dystopia? What happened to shows like Star Trek which gave us more helpful goals to work toward?

The reason I made this was that I noticed Mask R-CNN’s masking and object identification capabilities were pretty good and I needed a refresher on Python-based image manipulation. https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/976277067070300160?s=21

And then I remembered Black Mirror and it gave me an idea.

The step toward dystopia was not the primary motivation for this project.

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#12
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think software engineers are this century's key perpetrators of "good intentions." Here's a hint: if you saw it in a dystopic thriller you probably don't need to build it, even out of morbid curiosity.

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#14

This would combine well with an in-painting algorithm-- or the video equivalents: https://research.adobe.com/project/content-aware-fill/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3uCV0JYMJ4

Will someone kindly smash this repo https://github.com/fivemok/image-inpainting together with the submission?

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#15
In some cases the shape is too small and left a few pixels around the person, or it has corners that are too sharp. Is it possible to add an option to enlarge the shape a few pixels?

[Bonus points for another option to make soft shadows near the border of the shape, so it is not so sharp.]

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#16

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think software engineers are this century's key perpetrators of "good intentions." Here's a hint: if you saw it in a dystopic thriller you probably don't need to build it, even out of morbid curiosity.

If you saw it in a dystopic thriller and it's possible to build it then it's guaranteed that it will be built because the cat is out of the bag.

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#17

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think software engineers are this century's key perpetrators of "good intentions." Here's a hint: if you saw it in a dystopic thriller you probably don't need to build it, even out of morbid curiosity.

If you saw it in a dystopic thriller and it's possible to build it then it's guaranteed that it will be built because the cat is out of the bag.

It only gets built if some over-zealous nerds build it. That's the point.

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#18

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think software engineers are this century's key perpetrators of "good intentions." Here's a hint: if you saw it in a dystopic thriller you probably don't need to build it, even out of morbid curiosity.

I have not watched the dystopic thriller you mention, so I don't know what kind of drawbacks you are expecting, but I think this technology might have some useful applications.

E.g. an image-upload site could answer requests for deletion on privacy grounds not by taking the whole image down, but by obscuring only parts of the image.

Or imagine you're taking a selfie in a crowded place and don't want all those other people diverting attention away from you.

Basically, this could be used whenever someone might go for manually painting over parts of an image to remove content. Something similar for screenshots of conversations might be useful as well.

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you saw it in a dystopic thriller and it's possible to build it then it's guaranteed that it will be built because the cat is out of the bag.

It only gets built if some over-zealous nerds build it. That's the point.

Or someone that's "just doing their job".

Re: Automatically “block” people in images using a pretrained neural network

#20
post #13

What's next, cameras that refuse to take pictures of specific things? I find this unsettlingly creepy.

Scanners have been refusing to scan certain things for ages.

It's always a "fun" party trick at the office to show people that you can't scan money.
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