Many Internet users fear being spied on through their webcam. A legitimate fear since cases of webcam hacks are not uncommon. To save themselves, some opt for the unattractive solution of sticky paper covering the camera of their computer, but it may well be that another solution exists; the Disappearing People extension.
With it, no risk that a hacker would blackmail us with compromising videos of us since the Disappearing People tool makes disappear in real time any individual appearing in the video stream captured by a webcam.
The extension designer, Jason Mayes, relied on the JavaScript language and the TensorFlow tool, an open source library developed by Google and dedicated to machine learning, to develop its solution.
Invisible
Without going into technical details, the Jason Mayes extension is able to determine which part of the image is static and to extend it more widely on the video in order to make people moving or not disappear.
As soon as they enter the webcam, people are spotted and automatically deleted. In the image, it is as if the people were invisible, as the video of the designer shows perfectly.
The tool is not yet finished - we can see some duds in the video -, but it is already available on Github. Jason Mayes says the more people use it, the more his neural network will grow and therefore, he will improve. It is also possible to try it on its web page.
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- Disappearance
- cybersecurity
- Private life
- Computer science
- High-Tech
- webcam