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Fashion fights facial recognition systems via garish make-up, face-printed T-shirts, punk hair extensions

  • If you can bear your face resembling a Picasso painting – swirls, odd shapes, primary colours – wearing strategic make-up can foil facial recognition algorithms
  • Alternatively, try decoy T-shirts and dresses printed with facial features, or a hairpiece with spikes or a fringe obscuring the top half of your face

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If you are concerned about being monitored, anti-surveillance make-up confuses facial recognition algorithms.

Make-up is used for a variety of reasons. To look beautiful, younger, older, professional. To conceal something. And, in an era in which we are closely watched, to hide our identity.

In a world of ubiquitous closed-circuit television cameras and facial recognition software, lipstick, blusher and garish face paint can shield us from some of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance technology.

Computer Vision Dazzle – or CV Dazzle – was created by Berlin-based artist Adam Harvey in 2010, when the idea of citywide facial recognition camera networks and deep fake technology existed only in the realm of science fiction. Harvey has spent the past decade proving that thick, pigment-rich make-up painted in shapes across the face – with flourishes and swirls reminiscent of Pablo Picasso artworks – can prevent most facial-recognition algorithms accessing the wearer’s biometric profile.

In Hong Kong, anti-government protesters have been wearing masks – now banned under emergency laws – and dressing in black to escape the all-seeing eyes of the authorities. Harvey’s findings feel more relevant than ever.
Facial recognition software can be fooled with the strategic application of make-up. Photo: courtesy of CV Dazzle
Facial recognition software can be fooled with the strategic application of make-up. Photo: courtesy of CV Dazzle

Fittingly, CV Dazzle is named after an effective camouflage technique developed during World War I, when navies sought to protect their ships by obscuring their size and shape with sophisticated painting techniques that confused the human eye.

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