There prevails a general perception that government agencies spy on the public through their laptop’s in-built webcam, and hence people should cover it.

Jason Mayes, a Google web engineer, has recently come up with an AI-powered tool that removes people from a live broadcast without interfering with other objects.


Mayes used TensorFlow, which is a free and open-source framework used to build machine learning models, and JavaScript to create the tool and erase people from complex backgrounds instantly.

The “person removing” tool uses ML to learn over time to artificially create backgrounds, which are free of humans in the vicinity. The neural network recognizes human beings and deletes them from a live session.

The demonstration video shows that the tool is not yet 100% perfect. We can see some portions of Mayes appearing in the updated video while he is walking. However, the tool will definitely improve over time.

Mayes has posted the source code of the tool on Github. The tool can be tried using the code in your browser. However, this tool can also become problematic at times. Since the tool removes a person in real-time, this can be used by the thieves to remove themselves in surveillance videos or similar situations.