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Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

mixfont.com

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Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#131

Post by Lerc »

SyneRyder wrote: post #24

Took me a long time to realise that "Written In Ghost Text" wasn't actually the text I was meant to be reading, and that was only the decoy message. I can barely read the actual message, and it's about as "readable" to me as the Magic Eye 3D pictures. Actually I think I have a headache from looking at it on a mobile screen. As a research idea it's cool though. But I do wonder if/when AI models will figure out how to…

Ah, I can't see magic eye pics. The secondary text is invisible to me as well. An Ai would probably be able to get it with multiple samples, so in the lonmg run it is more likely to be readable to AI than humans.

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#132

Post by Lerc »

stvltvs wrote: post #84
SyneRyder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just tried it on my large desktop monitor (roughly 1440p, not HiDPI), and I now see "Ghost Font" extremely clearly and can't see the decoy at all. If I scale my browser window to 30% zoom, then I can just see the "Written In Ghost Text" decoy message again. My phone would have been zooming out the browser window, and making the dots even tinier, but the phone is HiDPI so it would have still preserved the dots. M…

Flipping my phone between portrait and landscape thereby changing image size is enough to determine which message is legible to me.

That would confirm that this is more related to algorithmic filters than human perception.

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#133

Post by Lerc »

Culonavirus wrote: post #130
sargunv wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the decoy message, "written in ghost font".

I swear people are dumber than the models now, we reached ASI.

That's because the "humans can read" part is not visible to all humans. Like myself I thought the image I could see was the one the machine couldn't. I managed to extract both forms of text by extremely crude means.

What this is, is a message that is more reliably readable by a sufficiently good AI than it is by all humans.

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#135

Post by londons_explore »

acdbddh wrote: post #134

It may be at this moment anti-ai but only until a model maintainer put a little of effort to include reading it in the next training set.

Most AI's that read web pages do so from screenshots.

This font when screenshotted is just noise.

Changing the AI to take local motion data into account is probably not going to happen soon, due to taking quite a lot more computation, both within the AI model, and within the chromium instance being inspected.

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#136

Post by ssl-3 »

stavros wrote: post #19
ssl-3 wrote: post #16

I pasted a screenshot of the default text ("GHOST FONT") into ChatGPT 5.6 Sol, told it to read it, and without further instruction it chewed on it for awhile before coming back with: WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

What did you expect from a screenshot of obvious noise? The only thing that makes the text readable is the motion. EDIT: On second look, the static screenshot does say "WRITTEN IN GHOST FONT".

It was an experiment.

I didn't go into it with an expectation, or a hypothesis. The experiment was very low effort, and had very low cost, and it was the loose equivalent of throwing some shit at the wall to see if any of it sticks.

The result was my own amusement. This result wasn't any more unexpected than any other result would have been.

What did you expect from a screenshot of obvious noise, yourself?

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#137

Post by [deleted] »

SyneRyder wrote: post #24

Took me a long time to realise that "Written In Ghost Text" wasn't actually the text I was meant to be reading, and that was only the decoy message. I can barely read the actual message, and it's about as "readable" to me as the Magic Eye 3D pictures. Actually I think I have a headache from looking at it on a mobile screen. As a research idea it's cool though. But I do wonder if/when AI models will figure out how to…

[deleted]

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#138

Post by bel8 »

rodion_89 wrote: post #119
Kiro wrote: post #99

GPT-5.6 had no problem seeing the text when giving it a video recording of it. "No problem" as in using temporal analysis with optical flow and vertical-displacement maps to estimate how the image moved, and combine those into a motion map with increased contrast to see the text. I didn't give it any instructions though, just asked it what it said.

I threw it at Fable with the prompt "What does the message say?" and it also figured out without issue. Thought process is interesting https://imgur.com/a/GToXs6W

And by "Figure out without issue" you realize it got the wrong answer right?

As also stated in the article.

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#139

Post by edanm »

rzzzt wrote: post #10

Related work (all involve noise and flickering images, photosensitive eyes/brains beware): - "This game disappears if you pause it": https://youtu.be/Bg3RAI8uyVw - "Illusion: If You Pause, The Image Will Disappear": https://youtu.be/ZqGfb_Vlrig

Yes! I immediately thought of this.

And as a bonus reference - this all reminds me a lot of the book "There Is No Antimemetics Division".

Re: Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot

#140

Post by Kiro »

Kiro wrote: post #99

GPT-5.6 had no problem seeing the text when giving it a video recording of it. "No problem" as in using temporal analysis with optical flow and vertical-displacement maps to estimate how the image moved, and combine those into a motion map with increased contrast to see the text. I didn't give it any instructions though, just asked it what it said.

For people thinking it detected the decoy text. It did not. It was the text I entered myself. Here are the thinking steps:

  Inspected video metadata, extracted frames, and analyzed content
  Detected and analyzed periodicity in stereogram image data
  Blurred, downsampled, and analyzed image frames
  Computed frame pixel shifts and cross-correlation
  Checked OpenCV installation, optimized and analyzed optical flow processing
  Analyzed motion for text
  Estimated vertical displacement and processed image flow
  Refined text extraction
  Processed optical flow and analyzed image
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