Tip #329: Blurs and Mosaics are No Longer Safe
… for Visual Effects
Tip #329: Blurs and Mosaics are No Longer Safe
Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com
Blurs are no longer safeguards against protecting identity.
For years, editors have used mosaic and blur effects to hide the identity of on-screen talent. However, recent research has found a way to reverse-engineer a high-quality image of the speaker’s face from a low-resolution blur. Here’s what you need to know.
Research published in Sept. 2018, from universities in the US and China has revealed a technology that “learns to reconstruct realistic [image] results with clear structures and fine details.”
Using a low-resolution image (on the left), their technology creates a high-quality result using off-the-shelf computer hardware and nVidia GPUs. Using AI, the researchers discovered an algorithm “to directly restore a clear high- resolution image from a blurry low-resolution input.”
“Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods on both synthetic and real-world images at a lower computational cost.”
Here’s a link to their scientific paper. The text is highly technical, but the images are frightening, if you are a producer charged with protecting someone’s identity.
KEY TAKEAWAY
If you want to protect the identity of an on-camera speaker, don’t shoot their face. Today’s technology makes blurs, mosaics and low-res images completely ineffective.
Looks like we’re back to the old school days of the black bars over the eyes.
Seriously though, will this tech be able to overcome a straight black mask over a face?
Ron:
Black bars, or, perhaps, silhouette lighting. But, pixels will become too easy to reverse engineer.
Larry
It’s probably not going to be an issue for me… I don’t have a famous face! ?
Philip:
This is not for your incredibly handsome visage. Rather, its for all the people in your videos that you weren’t able to get releases for.
Larry
Pretty scary! Thanks for that.
Vicki:
I agree – it reminds me that we need to be very careful – technology continues to advance.
Larry
Does this apply to audio masking of someone’s voice as well?
Paul:
Their research did not look into audio.
Larry