Real Life Ads Are Taking Scary Inspiration From Social Media (medium.com) 73
Advertisements in the real world are becoming more technologically sophisticated, integrating facial recognition, location data, artificial intelligence, and other powerful tools that are more commonly associated with your mobile phone. Welcome to the new age of digital marketing. From a report: During this year's Fashion Week in New York, a digital billboard ad for New Balance used A.I. technology to detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits. A billboard advertisement for the Chevy Malibu recently targeted drivers on Interstate 88 in Chicago by identifying the brand of vehicle they were driving, then serving ads touting its own features in comparison. And Bidooh, a Manchester-based startup that admits it was inspired by Minority Report, is using facial recognition to serve ads through its billboards in the U.K. and other parts of Europe as well as South Korea. According to its website, Bidooh allows advertisers to target people based on criteria like age, gender, ethnicity, hair color, clothing color, height, body shape, perceived emotion, and the presence of glasses, sunglasses, beards, or mustaches.
We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. Things have progressed as you'd expect: In 2016, another Times report described how Clear Channel Outdoor Americas had partnered with companies including AT&T to track people via their mobile phones. The ads could determine the gender and average age of people passing different billboards and determine whether they visited a store after seeing an ad.
We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. Things have progressed as you'd expect: In 2016, another Times report described how Clear Channel Outdoor Americas had partnered with companies including AT&T to track people via their mobile phones. The ads could determine the gender and average age of people passing different billboards and determine whether they visited a store after seeing an ad.
Anyone have.... (Score:2)
Any other way you can think of to block this?
Re:Anyone have.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This could be what takes ad-blocking mainstream. Imagine driving down the road and the billboard suddenly changes to show you the new Ford SUX Rockhard, with the slogan "IS YOURS BIG ENOUGH?" and a young lady dressed in some very specific fetish gear draped over it. Then it photoshops your contorted face behind the wheel and you curse yourself for not unplugging your webcam before visiting xHamster.
Re: (Score:2)
....a scramble suit handy?
Scramble suite wearers are 60% more likely to buy barbecue related products.
Advertising gold!
Re: (Score:2)
....a scramble suit handy?
Scramble suite wearers are 60% more likely to buy barbecue related products.
Advertising gold!
That would have been a lot funnier without the typo.
Though now I have a new marketing idea, the Scramble Suite of anti-ad defenses ..
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I think I ready about gait recognition being pretty good now
Yep, FB and Google are pushing that tech hard, so they can recognize people whose faces are not visible in photos and videos.
This was 3 years ago [newscientist.com]. 83% accuracy based on secondary features like hair style, clothing, pose, limb lengths and ratios, etc. That was years ago: They are better now.
There is no escape, except if people will smarten up and stop using Facebook, Google, or others which do the same things. They must be put out of business.
Just say no.
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm, perhaps I need to develop a Silly Walk [youtube.com] to fool the cameras.
Either that, or act like I"m trying to avoid rhythmic walking patterns that can attract sand worms.....
Re: (Score:2)
The recognition algorithms can already see through most silly walks, fake limps, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Cough, cough, there are better ways. Cities are highly polluted locations and wearing one of these https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=d... [amazon.com], it will factually substantially reduce your risk of cancer, in fact those who patrol the streets could probably sue their agencies for failing to provide them. Hugely reduce the risk of infection by inhaled contagions, block toxic smoke particles and of course the constant effluvia of animal poop from farms and parks, that get blown into the atmosphere as dust, yeah, you rout
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Anyone have.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one of the more cyberpunk tidbits I've heard within the last 3 months, but some tattoos were really throwing off facial recognition [nih.gov]. And they found that you could paint your face and effectively fool the system into no longer recognizing your face as a face [discovermagazine.com]. So all that really weird face makeup you see in Blade-runner, cyberpunk2020, and Shadowrun could retro-actively be argued as a means to avoid being tagged and identified.
Re: (Score:2)
IR LEDs might be a more practical option. They tend to blind most cameras but are invisible to the naked eye.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been wanting for years to be able to get a ring of those around my license plate, to help defeat the damed plate readers.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how legal they would be. Invisible to the naked eye so no issues there. Police would probably try to claim that they were to frustrate speed cameras, but you could argue they were for general privacy as every bugger has a camera these days.
Could cause problems with car parks that use number plate scanning. Maybe have an off switch in the cabin.
Re: (Score:2)
Bedazzle yourself! [cvdazzle.com]
Re: (Score:2)
....a scramble suit handy?
Any other way you can think of to block this?
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Would the GDPR actually help with most of those? If the billboard isn't sending anything back, but is instead simply processing your appearance locally and then acting locally on that information, is there any actual collection of data, so far as the GDPR is concerned? What about if the sensor that scans you is a black box that only outputs booleans corresponding to your traits (Beard: Yes. Long hair: No. Sunglasses: Yes.) and that even that data only ever stays on-device and never leaves to go to anyone's
Re: (Score:3)
Biometric data can only be processed with explicit permission from the subject. It would have to be opt-in.
Re: (Score:2)
Google will make it "voluntary" in such a way that you have no other option.
And they will get away with it because everyone thinks they are great.n Whilst at the same time their users are jailed in China.
Re: (Score:2)
So, I did a little sleuthing around to follow up on this. This writeup [gamingtechlaw.com] walks through several topics in more detail, but the most relevant thing on that page is this quote from EU regulations, which elaborates specifically on the processing of photos:
The processing of photographs should not systematically be considered to be processing of special categories of personal data as they are covered by the definition of biometric data only when processed through a specific technical means allowing the unique identification or authentication of a natural person.
I.e. Only when the processing of an image results in data that can be used to uniquely identify the individual is it considered sensitive data. Similarly, the official site [europa.eu] would seem to indicate the same, since it says that biometric data is considered sensitiv
Ban all ads (Score:1)
Kill all capitalists
I don't see the problem (Score:2)
Now if you'll excuse me it's time for a smoke and a shot of popsi. Ah, the circle of consumption...
Obligatory Futurama (Score:4, Insightful)
if you don't want your brain pumped full of advertisements [wikipedia.org] just don't walk into the advertising zones. Now if you'll excuse me it's time for a smoke and a shot of popsi. Ah, the circle of consumption...
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree."
Scary? (Score:1)
Self-driving cars and augmented reality should help quite a bit with ads and light pollution.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you mean. Self-driving cars and augmented reality are obviously going to add to the ads that exist, as you get driven to a location and beamed right into your eye.
Game the system with your face... (Score:3)
If you don't like advertisements which track you, than fight back: just make horribly disgusted facial expressions every time you look at an ad! It's a totally brilliant tactic, because if enough people follow this advice, these horribly unethical and creepy companies will eventually just give up and stop advertising altogether!
....... Oh, and no, your mommy's scold about your face "sticking that way" is absolutely not true, I promise! The ugly expressions might eventually become a habit, and those expressions might cause permanent frown wrinkles over the course of time, which could ultimately make you look like a genuinely bitter old codger in your later years in life, thus entirely ruining the effect on those rare occasions when you actually try to smile... but trust me: that's totally not the same thing.
/s
Re: (Score:2)
They'll get paid to show a rival's ad when people scowl at the billboard in some sort of false-flag operation.
Re: (Score:2)
Disgust = engagement.
Dark sunglasses might work better, at least that way they can't so easily tell if you are paying any attention to their ad. Maybe some IR LEDs to blind their cameras.
Re: (Score:2)
Advertisers. Marketing. Sales.
Re: (Score:2)
What about model releases? (Score:2)
detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits
If the 'highlighting' included displaying a photo or video of the person wearing that outfit, wouldn't that be unauthorized for-profit use of that person's image?
Re: (Score:3)
detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits
If the 'highlighting' included displaying a photo or video of the person wearing that outfit, wouldn't that be unauthorized for-profit use of that person's image?
Yeah, I was wondering that too.
If you want to use my image to sell stuff, you can compensate me financially for that, thanks. And get my consent too.
Won't last (Score:2)
Just wait until someone tricks it into continually serving racist propaganda. If I've learned anything from the internet, this won't last.
I don't deal with ads (Score:2)
I block them all. No exceptions.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you block billboards in the real world?
Re: (Score:3)
Augmented reality. Now available in the The Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hear Roddy Piper has some sunglasses that might do the trick.
Re: (Score:2)
Pffft!! BFD (Score:2)
OK I'm sorry (Score:3, Informative)
" highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits"
I just went to the corner to get some beer, I thought the pajamas were good enough for that distance.
ban sci-fi (Score:2)
we need to put a stop to all those sci-fi writers, clearly they have good intentions, but people reading the stuff all think those are great ideas we need to have in our lives and go out and invent a working model of it.
I knew it! (Score:2)
" highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits"
Real, actual Fashion-Police!