The police are increasingly wearing body cameras, and smart glasses that instantly share your life on social media may one day become the norm. But if they鈥檙e capturing our every waking move, what about those private moments we don鈥檛 want recorded? One solution could be PrivacEye, a system that tries to learn when to stop filming and when to start again.
The device combines a forward-facing camera with a second pointing at the wearer鈥檚 own eye. Whilst filming with the first lens, a type of artificial intelligence algorithm called a convolutional neural network constantly scans the scene looking for clues that privacy is needed. The scene might include office colleagues who wouldn鈥檛 want a camera recording all of their keystrokes or a visit to the bathroom.
The neural network was trained by reviewing hours of footage rated on a seven-point privacy scale. Any situation with one of the two lowest ratings, indicating the most private moments, would automatically switch off the camera. In future versions 鈥渢he user would determine what is and isn鈥檛 sensitive, and the network would adapt,鈥� says at the University of Oldenburg in Germany.
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Once the device is confident that you no longer want to film, a shutter comes down on the main camera. The role of the second lens is to work out when to start filming again. It begins focusing on the wearer鈥檚 eyes, watching 52 different features including pupil diameter and the number of blinks.
After it thinks the sensitive moment has passed it pulls back the shutter and begins recording again. In one example the forward-facing lens stops filming as you watch a colleague鈥檚 computer screen, then the second lens reads eye gaze jumps from word to word to sense when you鈥檙e done and it鈥檚 OK to resume shooting.
Keep your eyes peeled
Though PrivacEye 鈥渕ight be potentially very valuable for consumer products, it would raise a lot of concerns if you tried to apply it to police,鈥� says at The Constitution Project, an information rights think tank based in the US. If PrivacEye went wrong it could easily miss crucial events by reading the situation incorrectly or record something private by accident.
Some of those who tested it also had reservations. Of the 17 people who tried PrivacEye, five were worried that even with the shutter down the camera would still record audio, and four more were concerned it could malfunction at the worst possible time.
鈥淲e are starting to live in a world where everyone wants to record everything,鈥� says , at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany. 鈥淲e want to log our lives and see what we鈥檙e doing every day, but also to protect this information.鈥� As always-on cameras become more ubiquitous, automating when to turn them off may save a few embarrassing moments.
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Read more: A world where cameras are always on may make us less human
