Revealed at Pepcom in Barcelona earlier this week, AVG demoed a pair of concept ‘invisibility glasses’ – designed by the antivirus firm’s Innovation Labs – which make it more difficult for cameras and facial recognition technologies to get a clear view of your identity.
How do they work?
While the technology behind the invisibility glasses is still in the prototype phase, there are generally two different methods of combatting unwanted facial recognition:
- Infrared light – which break facial detection software when turned on
- Retro-reflective materials – which reflect light back at the same angle as it arrived, effectively blacking out an image
Why do you need them?
There are a number of reasons why invisibility glasses could be a valuable privacy tool in the future, including:
- The increasing amount unsolicited images taken of us which end up online, thanks to the use of smartphone cameras in public places
- Advances in facial-recognition technologies, such as Facebook’s DeepFace, could soon give private corporations the power to not only recognise us, but also cross-reference our faces to other data found online.
For more information on the glasses, please read the following blog by AVG Innovation Labs
