Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Google Phone Technology Sees Spies Looking Over Your Shoulder

Google Phone Technology Sees Spies Looking Over Your Shoulder

Be it sitting on a train or in a coffee shop, we all know our text conversations are not private. It's too easy for a curious stranger's eyes to wander over to see what we are texting, or to see that NSFW photo someone just sent us. Well, those days of peeking at someone else’s text conversations might be finally coming to an end. A Google research project is developing software that can tell if someone is looking at your phone from over your shoulder, in an effort to preserve privacy while in public.


We're not hiding our conversations as well as we think we are.

Thankfully, new software will defeat prying eyes.

Google researchers Hee Jung Ryu and Florian Schroff will present their new electronic screen protector next month at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Long Beach, California. Their demonstration will have a Google Pixel phone use its front-facing camera and their eye-detecting AI to catch people looking at the screen.

Their Youtube video already demonstrates the software successfully interrupting a text conversation in progress, so that it can alert the phone's handler of the peeping perpetrator. A camera view appears on the screen, exposing and identifying the spy with a rainbow of vomit much like in Snapchat.

Living in a Minority Report world.

Ryu and Schroff claim their AI software can work in various lighting situations and can recognize a person's eye line gaze within two milliseconds. The software can operate that quickly because it runs locally on the phone, instead of sending-receiving data with a processor on Google's powerful cloud servers.

But the new gaze-detection software can and will likely become a two-edged sword. While it can protect your privacy from strangers around you, it can also learn more about your reading and viewing habits - and this is data, as with all user data these days, that can be commercialized.

How soon will it before this technology is incorporated into advertising and marketing, both in public and in the privacy of our own devices?

Some people would rather have time and resources spent on other, more humanitarian needs.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

h/t: Quartz,

More from News

Screenshots from Reese Witherspoon's Instagram video with actor Lexi Minetree
@reesewitherspoon/Instagram

Reese Witherspoon Brings Actor To Tears With 'Legally Blonde' Prequel Series Casting Reveal In Sweet Video

Actor Reese Witherspoon made a young actor emotional when she announced the casting news for the upcoming prequel series to Legally Blonde.

Witherspoon played the starring role of Elle Woods in the 2001 comedy film Legally Blonde, which followed Elle, a sorority girl who goes to Harvard in a failed attempt to win back her ex-boyfriend but beats the odds and overcomes stereotypes to become a successful lawyer.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ke Huy Quan with Harrison Ford in 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'
Paramount Pictures

Ke Huy Quan Recalls How Harrison Ford Comforted Him After He Started Crying On 'Indiana Jones' Set

Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan recalled the endearing moment from filming Steven Spielberg's 1984 film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, when star Harrison Ford comforted him during a scary action sequence.

Quan was 13 when he became a child actor playing Short Round, the sidekick to Ford's Indy in the darker sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Keep ReadingShow less
Encyclopedia Britannica; Gulf of America Google map designation
Mario Tama/Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Encyclopedia Britannica Explains Why It Won't Be Using 'Gulf Of America' In Viral Twitter Thread

Encyclopedia Britannica was praised after it explained on Twitter its reasoning for sticking with the Gulf of Mexico instead of going along with President Donald Trump's executive order renaming it the "Gulf of America."

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order changing the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America." The order also reversed an Obama-era decision and changed the name of the Alaskan mountain "Denali" back to "Mount McKinley."

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump in the Oval Office
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Trump Reminds Critics Of 'Access Hollywood' Tape After Awkwardly Mispronouncing 'TikTok'

President Donald Trump was mocked after he couldn't seem to get the pronunciation of "TikTok" quite right while talking to reporters—and it harkened back to part of his hot mic Access Hollywood tape scandal.

While speaking to reporters, Trump mistakenly referred to the social media platform TikTok as "Tic Tac" twice in quick succession, confusing it with the popular breath mint brand.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pete Davidson
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

The Internet Is Divided On Pete Davidson's New Look After He Got Nearly 200 Tattoos Removed

Actor and former SNL star Pete Davidson has become an unlikely heartthrob since coming onto the scene, but fans aren't too sure about his new look.

The actor has long been known for his huge collection of tattoos that covered both arms and almost all of his torso—big tattoos, small tattoos, black and white tattoos, color tattoos, the dude was a walking billboard for tattoos.

Keep ReadingShow less