Skip to main content

Researchers find a way to make photos and muted videos ‘speak’ – here’s what it could mean for your privacy

Capturing audio from a still image may feel like something out of a sci-fi novel, but one scientist has actually devised a way to do it, with the helping hand of AI.

By creating a machine learning tool called Side Eye, a team led by professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science at Northeastern University, Kevin Fu, can read into images to an extraordinary degree.

By applying Side Eye to a still image, they can determine the gender of a speaker in the room, where the photo was taken, and the words they spoke, according to TechXplore. They can also apply the tool to muted videos.

An AI-powered privacy nightmare?

"Imagine someone is doing a TikTok video and they mute it and dub music," Fu told the publicaton. "Have you ever been curious about what they're really saying? Was it 'Watermelon watermelon' or 'Here's my password?' Was somebody speaking behind them? You can actually pick up what is being spoken off camera."

The machine learning-powered Side Eye exploits image stabilization technology that’s universally used across almost all smartphone cameras. 

Cameras built into smartphones have springs to suspend the lens in liquid, meaning photos aren’t taken blurry or out of focus due to somebody’s shaky grip. Sensors and an electromagnet combine to push the lens in the opposite direction to whatever shakiness is being applied, to stabilize the image.

When somebody speaks near the camera lens while the photo is being taken, it creates tiny vibrations in the springs and bends the light in a subtle way. Although it would be near-impossible to extract the sonic frequency from these vibrations, this is made simple due to the rolling shutter method of photography most cameras use.

"The way cameras work today to reduce cost basically is they don't scan all pixels of an image simultaneously – they do it one row at a time," Fu added. "[That happens] hundreds of thousands of times in a single photo. What this basically means is you're able to amplify by over a thousand times how much frequency information you can get, basically the granularity of the audio."

While Side Eye itself is in a very basic form, and requires far more training data to refine and perfect, should a more advanced form of the system fall into the wrong hands, it could pose a cybersecurity nightmare for many.  

But, there are positive implications for the technology too, especially should a far more advanced form of Side Eye be used as a kind of digital evidence for those working to investigate crime. 

More from TechRadar Pro



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TechRadar's Year in Review: AI revolution, smartphone evolution, and visions of the future

If I had to sum up 2023 in one word it would be AI. Okay, technically that’s two initials, but let’s not quibble – because there’s no doubt that it provided the year in tech with its main story arc. Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year, as every company in the world gawped at the massive impact of ChatGPT, and decided they wanted to jump aboard that bandwagon. You could barely move for new chatbots, new image generators, and new AI-enhanced features in every device released in 2023. And there’s no sign of that changing in 2024; in fact, we expect it to be an even bigger deal. Elsewhere, phones and laptops did much the same as they had the previous year – well, except where they had new AI-enhanced features – so it was in the virtual reality space where bigger changes were afoot. If the Meta Quest 3 was impressive then the Apple Vision Pro looks to be genuinely game-changing, and we can’t wait to see what impact it has in the next 12 months. Of course we also saw plenty ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft and Sony enter "binding agreement" to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation

Microsoft has announced that it has reached a "binding agreement" with Sony, pledging to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.  With Microsoft having won its anti-trust case with the US Federal Trade Commission , its planned acquisition of Call of Duty developers Activision Blizzard has taken a big step closer to becoming a reality. In order to alleviate the concerns of monopoly-building that got Microsoft in legal hot water to begin with, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, announced yesterday via Tweet that it has entered into an "agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation."  This agreement will no doubt come as a relief to fans concerned that Microsoft's acquisition plans might result in Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, following in the footsteps of future Bethesda releases. Since Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda caused the studio to break its tradition of offering titles cross-platform for upcomi...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Stardew Valley-like farming sim plays at the bottom of your screen so you work and play at the same time

Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are among some of the best choices out there if you're looking for a game to get swept up in for hours at a time. But, if you're a fan of management sims and a multitasker as well, this upcoming farming sim will likely pique your interest.  Developed by Mister Morris Games, Rusty's Retirement is an idle-farming simulation game that runs at the bottom of your gaming monitor, allowing you to focus on other tasks like working while you tend to your crops. Set to release in Q1 2024 on Steam , the idle sim puts you in the shoes of a wholesome robot as you grow crops and use them to produce clean and energy-efficient biofuel. Having gathered this "vital robot power source," you'll then need to sell your harvest to the other machine inhabitants of your settlement. This, in turn, will let you reinvest the money into expanding your farm. If you're a terrible procrastinator (like me) this might not sound like your cup of tea...
Post a Comment
Read more