TikTok makes available a highly sophisticated photo identification tool on its platform that was considered ‘too dangerous’ by Google and other tech companies, according to New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill.
PimEyes, a website and a tool available on TikTok, can identify someone’s face merely by taking a photo of them. Users can figure out the names of total strangers in a crowd by snapping pictures or even screenshots of events, as seen in one TikTok where a user found the name and social media profile of a cameraman at a Taylor Swift concert. This was uploaded to TikTok on August 11, and remains on the platform as of October 11, even though TikTok community guidelines prohibits personal information in the name of preventing stalking and identity theft.
In early 2017, a Facebook engineer sat in a conference room in Menlo Park with a smartphone standing on the brim of his baseball cap, attached w/rubber bands. Everyone was laughing at how absurd it looked. Then the phone started speaking their names aloud. https://t.co/yfDCkdeoVm
— Kashmir Hill (@kashhill) September 9, 2023
According to Hill, this technology has already been developed by Meta and Google, but has been prevented from being deployed by top executives like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. NPR notes that tech companies holding back the release of new products is almost unheard of in the “fast-paced, hyper-competitive world of Silicon Valley.”
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“Eric Schmidt as far back as 2011, said this was the one technology that Google had developed and decided to hold back, that it was too dangerous in the wrong hands — if it was used by a dictator, for example,” Hill said.
PimEyes was founded in 2017 by two Poland-based computer programmers. The company advertises the AI software as a service to help people monitor their online presence, but it has drawn criticism for the use it provides to stalkers, according to security researchers, and it has had to defend itself against European Union legislation. It has been confirmed that PimEyes has added photos of children and deceased persons without permission.
Kashmir Hill, also the author of a book on facial recognition called Your Face Belongs to Us, is utterly against the use of the app. “Something happens on the train, you bump into someone, or you’re wearing something embarrassing, somebody could just take your photo, and find out who you are and maybe tweet about you, or call you out by name, or write nasty things about you online,” she said.
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