
Launch HN: D-ID (YC S17) – Protecting Identities from Face Recognition Tech - SellaBlondheim
Hi all,<p>We are D-ID (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;d-id.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;d-id.com&#x2F;</a>), part of the YC S17 batch. We protect people&#x27;s identities by processing face images in a way that denies automated face recognition, while keeping them similar to the human eye. We’ve just launched on TechCrunch and signed our first pilot, so here’s some info about us.<p>With the advancements of face recognition technologies (both in accuracy and growing use), the data in face images must be protected, because unlike passwords, you cannot change your face.<p>We came upon this idea after experiencing it as a personal pain at first, while serving in the military where we were not allowed to post to social media for reasons of information security, later to realize that it has become a worldwide issue where we’re all losing our basic right to privacy.<p>At first it was meant to be a B2C product, but we then understood that businesses are in greater need due to their responsibility in handling personal data of their clients and&#x2F;or employees.<p>Since we use image manipulation techniques, it&#x27;s clear that if all goes well it will probably start an arms race with face recognition algorithms. Would love to hear your ideas as to how to win in this battle :)<p>Our approach helps companies which handle images (cloud storage or even just profile pictures of their employees&#x2F;users) to comply with privacy regulations, such as the GDPR (an EU regulation, nearly worldwide in its scope, which addresses face images as Sensitive Personal Data).<p>This gives companies a way to keep using images but without the responsibility of protecting the sensitive data they carry, helping them build their brand reputation for caring about the privacy of their clients&#x2F;employees. We also enable security agencies and governments to protect their citizens and employees.<p>We’d love to hear feedback from the HN community! And we&#x27;ll be glad of course to answer any questions you may have.
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yablak
You're entering an active and mainly successful research field:

[https://nips.cc/Conferences/2016/Schedule?showEvent=6213](https://nips.cc/Conferences/2016/Schedule?showEvent=6213)

TL;DR: if a human eye can differentiate, GANs can learn to differentiate given
enough training data.

however, it's unlikely that gov't regulations will catch up with technology
like this for 10+ years so you can probably sell your algorithms to give
companies legal protection.

~~~
doh
Wouldn't be sure about that. Plenty of companies will catch up quickly
especially ones like Palantir.

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aub3bhat
I am developing Deep Video Analytics [1] which incorporates FaceNet [2] and
MTCNN detector.

1\. What makes you think that governments would openly release their
recognition models?

2\. Do you have any hard numbers?

3\. What's the difference between manipulating an image vs. just
blurring/blacking it out, since the latter essentially gives you complete
anonymity.

In my experience all Adversarial techniques fall apart when another algorithm
is added to the mix (including the recent ones by OpenAI [3]). As a result I
am frankly distrustful of any claim about protecting identity. The State of
Art in Face Recognition moves extremely fast, and these are just publicly
available / permissively licensed models, and not what Government agencies
around the world are experimenting on with their billion face datasets. [4]

[1] [http://www.deepvideoanalytics.com/](http://www.deepvideoanalytics.com/)

[2]
[https://github.com/davidsandberg/facenet/](https://github.com/davidsandberg/facenet/)

[3]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/oshcos8wzvqtgow/Screenshot%202017-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/oshcos8wzvqtgow/Screenshot%202017-07-25%2013.44.23.png?dl=0)

[4] [https://github.com/wy1iu/sphereface](https://github.com/wy1iu/sphereface)

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Animats
Cool website. Domain in Columbia TLD. No examples. No street address. No
identity info in SSL cert. Anonymous domain registration. Very little info in
Crunchbase.[1] Not in Dun and Bradstreet.

[1]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/d-id#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/d-id#/entity)

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thinbeige
Brilliant idea but no explanation about how it works, not the slightest hint
and no before-after-pics.

Will you stick eyes closer together, stretch noses and mess with other face
geometries so nobody takes selfies anymore?

Curious.

EDIT: Ok, I think I know what they do, my first guess:

They change/normalize/randomize the proportions and geometry of the face +
make the pic blurry. Look at their team fotos at
[https://www.deidentification.co/#team](https://www.deidentification.co/#team)
where their faces don't look normal.

They slightly alter distances between (and dimensions of) eyes, eyebrowes,
nose, mouth, chin and other face features that it's harder to identify faces.

The questions is if this works with pictures shot from other than frontal
viewing angles and if users want to put such pics on sites with public
exposure like LinkedIn, FB or Instagram.

~~~
mejari
I'm hoping the employee pictures at the bottom are after examples, otherwise
there's no excuse for being that blurry.

~~~
gilperry
Haha we’re actually about to publish our new website - the photos at the
bottom are not protected and I agree that they are in bad quality... they’ll
be changed in the following days. Thx!

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Cyph0n
Congrats on getting into YC! I like your landing page; simple and clear. One
minor comment: it would be nice to see a short bio for each of the team
members.

I have one technical question. How are you confident that your tech cannot be
reversed? Since your company depends entirely on this technique, I'm assuming
that your main priority is to avoid such a situation. I'm guessing that you
are leveraging some sort of one-way function. If so, how "future proof" is the
function you are using?

Good luck!

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zitterbewegung
When you have a chance could you give a blogpost on an overview of your
system? I realize that it could be a trade secret or you don't have the time
to do one now. I could make a educated guess that you are stopping
classification by generating adversarial examples of the users face.

Also would you consider B2C in the future? I had an idea of something that
consumers would buy but I don't have the time right now and would wonder if
there would be some need at all for my idea.

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danso
Do you have samples of face images and their corresponding obfuscated images?

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tyingq
The photos of the team look suspiciously grainy and low res. I wonder if they
might be dogfooding there.
[https://www.deidentification.co/#team](https://www.deidentification.co/#team)

~~~
aub3bhat
I don't think so, I tested and neither detector nor recognizer were fooled.
Here are the results with FaceNet, Inception, MTCNN face detector and
MobileNet SSD detector. Facenet also retrieved similar looking faces from LFW.

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/weasqs8pxn9q7qv/screencapture-
loca...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/weasqs8pxn9q7qv/screencapture-
localhost-8000-frames-13396-1501005613202.png?dl=0)

[2] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/i2nii4biy8aioyo/screencapture-
loca...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i2nii4biy8aioyo/screencapture-
localhost-8000-query_detection-57349-1501005569123.png?dl=0)

[3] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmq8ldqujyk3pa9/screencapture-
loca...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmq8ldqujyk3pa9/screencapture-
localhost-8000-query_detection-57351-1501005503971.png?dl=0)

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mxuribe
At first, I started reading this, and thought it was like that lifelock
service (that i used to see TV commercials for)...but then read "Our approach
helps companies which handle images...to comply with privacy regulations...",
and then understood. I think there is a good market for this...though for
slow-moving enterprises and governments it might still be early days. But,
hey, you guys will have first-mover advantage, so kudos to you!

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33W
Perhaps I'm overly plugged into political news right now, but I read your name
as "Democrat - Idaho".

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dang
All: I'm not sure what happened here by way of engaging the community, but as
long as D-ID is AWOL I'm going to bury this post. Sorry about that!

The Launch HN 'contract' is that founders engage with the community. I'm sure
that's what they meant to do, so something must have come up. Whatever it was,
I'm sorry that everyone's questions haven't been answered yet. If this
changes, we'll un-bury the post and I'll delete my comment.

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gilperry
Hi all, Sorry, we didn't expect such a volume of comments. And are now here to
answer them one by one. Thanks!

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newuuser
Are there any demo images processed with your "obfuscation" tool?

~~~
orensol
Looks like their own photos on the landing page are obfuscated.

