In an innovation that has divided people between supporters who find it useful and opponents who find it "scary", a new website claims it can find every photo of anyone ever posted online.
The site, called PimEyes, relies on artificial intelligence technology to recognize faces. The site allows you to keep track of all your photos that have ever been posted. And the site confirms that it is able to erase the images that you do not want anyone to see "permanently" from the Internet.
The mechanism works somewhat like Google's reverse image search tool, through which a user uploads an image and searches for its owner or details. Using AI face recognition technology, the site can find photos where your face is, even if it's in a crowd. This means that you can upload a photo of yourself and use it to find any embarrassing old photos, or even random group shots that were taken somehow without you realizing it.
And with the site realizing that many people around the world will want to permanently erase images of themselves from the Internet, the price they ask for the service is not cheap. Subscribing to the site costs about $96 per month, while subscribing to the "advanced" service costs about $360.
The announcement of the new site's services sparked a state of controversy among Internet users, as some considered it an unacceptable breach of privacy, while others saw that it would save them from embarrassing and undesirable situations, by enabling them to permanently erase it from the Internet.
For its part, the company behind PimEyes argues that it "has never been, and is not a tool, to identify the identity or details of any individual, but rather seeks to help people find images of themselves on publicly available websites," according to the Daily Star.