Could 'anti-surveillance' clothing be the answer to privacy concerns surrounding facial recognition software ?

Adam Harvey, a Berlin-based artist and privacy researcher, has unveiled a new project aimed at rendering facial recognition software pretty much useless, The Guardian reports.

HyperFace, which has been in development since 2013, hopes to be “a new kind of camouflage that aims to reduce the confidence score of facial detection and recognition”.

So how does it work?

A HyperFace prototype credit: Adam Harvey

HyperFace works by confusing facial recognition software through creating “false-face computer vision camouflage patterns” on clothing and textiles.

Harvey says it “reduces the confidence score of the true face while shifting confidence to the nearby false face regions”.

He adds the “project opens new opportunities for altering the environment and architecture to impact and undermine the effectiveness of computer vision”.

The artist explains that HyperFace is “an extension” of his earlier CV Dazzle project, which explored how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology.

CV Dazzle uses “avant-garde hairstyling and makeup designs to break apart the continuity of a face”, blocking detection by creating an “anti-face”.

So what inspired the projects?

“Both projects are motivated by concerns about how computer vision will be used to extract knowledge with the cooperation or consent of an individual,” he explains.

He believes that facial recognition software and related technology poses “a significant threat to privacy”.

“But it's not just ‘facial recognition’,” he explains. “This is becoming an umbrella term for remotely captured biometrics, which also includes ear recognition, eye recognition, skin texture analysis, heart rate analysis (through amplification of blood flow in capillaries), and breathing rate.”

He says that “about 80 different attributes that can be analysed” using this technology.

HyperFace is being developed for Hyphen Labs NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism project at Sundance Film Festival 2017.

In other tech news, this genius ‘paparazzi-proof’ scarf can make you ‘invisible’ in photos.