PimEyes, a public search engine that uses facial recognition to match online photos of people, has banned searches of minors over concerns it endangers children, reports The New York Times. At least, it should. PimEyes’ new detection system, which uses age detection AI to identify whether the person is a child, is still very much a work in progress. After testing it, The New York Times found it struggles to identify children photographed at certain angles.
In the article, Hill writes that the service banned over 200 accounts for inappropriate searches of children. One parent told Hill she’d even found photos of her children she’d never seen before using PimEyes. In order to find out where the image came from, the mother would have to pay a $29.99 monthly subscription fee. PimEyes is just one of the facial recognition engines that have been in the spotlight for privacy violations.