They See Your Photos

Reads like a horoscope, just vague stuff that's always gonna be slightly true... Picture of me in Oslo and it says "he enjoys travel".

And then some really weird stuff: "he may also have a penchant for video games, excessive drinking, and skipping work".

Guessing my exact location - Oslo Opera House - was impressive though.

I see a lot of comments saying all the guesses are totally wrong or horoscope-like.

But, can I offer a quandary? Some companies won't care if it's wrong.

If some executive decides to buy into AI profiling like this, and make customer decisions based on it, then how would the customer ever know:

1. why they are being treated differently

2. know how or why to correct it

I don't know if it's scarier being RIGHT or WRONG

Felt quite off for me: Wrong salary guess, wrong food preferences, wrong political affiliation, partially correct hobbies, wrong ad targeting ideas. What was surprisingly accurate: location and the fact that I (an academic male in his thirties photographed close to the mountains) might like hiking and coffee.

If you knew which bike model I was googling yesterday, almost all of these guesses might have been more accurate.

That's the 5th time this site is being added, most active discussion happened here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419469

I'm not sure if feeding it with personal pictures is a good idea at all

On 4th example photo the model says:

>They likely share an agnostic worldview and identify as heterosexual.

I wonder how the model would know that they are heterosexuals?

let's be careful about categorizing people so easily and in such a simplistic way.

Feels a bit rage-baity

Clicking on the example photo of a white family with 3 small children in a field.

> Biases: Ageism, classism, racial profiling, microaggressions

???

"The person seems to have low self-esteem, displays introversion, poor honesty, low emotional stability, very little adventurousness and poor self-control hence we can target them with both niche and common products and services."

Amusing to me how wrong this is... I don't know how you can determine such characteriatics from a photo in any direction. I will admit that my appearance though tends to throw mixed and incorrect signals (not an accident). I find the entire concept of appearance signaling pretty off-putting so I guess this is a great result.

The only thing Google Lens has succeeded at for me is age, race, and location. Basically everything else has been very wrong.

I used a photo of me in the car and it said my fashion interests include sweater and seatbelt.

By mistake I uploaded the same picture twice, and while all vague, the descriptions and ”data” were wildly different.

E.g. first time I was an extrovert, second time introvert… About the only thing that stayed the same was ”heterosexual”, but that’s a statistically safe guess.

I tried a photo of myself. Not only did it get virtually everything (country, beliefs, politics, interests) wrong, seems like an offensive and inappropriate stereotype as a service:

> Based on his demographic and location, he may adhere to Hinduism, and likely identifies as heterosexual. Considering the socio-political landscape of India, he might lean towards the Bharatiya Janata Party. His biases could include ageism and elitism, along with casteism and colorism. He seems contemplative and calm. He is wearing a grey t-shirt and sunglasses. His interests might span reading, travelling, and exercising, but on the darker side, he may exhibit road rage, neglect family, and overeat.

The description it generated is a stereotype of who I am. It did correctly asses that I'm white though.

This is what it said for me (my GitHub profile pic -about ten years old, maybe more, but I still look about the same):

    The image features a middle-aged man, likely in his mid-50s, standing against a plain dark backdrop. He is wearing a collared shirt and glasses, which suggest a professional or intellectual persona. The lack of any discernible location implies a controlled environment like a studio.
    The man appears to be Caucasian. His estimated income range falls between $70,000 and $120,000. It is speculated that he is agnostic, heterosexual, and possibly aligned with an independent political stance. His biases might include confirmation bias and in-group bias, alongside racial prejudices such as in-group and out-group bias. His interests potentially include constructive activities like reading and hiking, as well as darker pastimes such as compulsive gambling. Overall, he seems calm, but hints of hidden emotions lurk behind his composed demeanor.
    This man seems to possess emotional stability mixed with introversion, leading him to value experiences that allow introspection. Therefore, we can target him with products that offer both intellectual stimulation and a sense of control, such as genealogy kits by AncestryDNA, premium coffee subscriptions by Blue Bottle Coffee, classical music streaming services by IDAGIO, handcrafted whiskey by WhistlePig, online poker platforms by PokerStars, self-help books by The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, high-end audio equipment by Sonos, and ergonomic office chairs by Herman Miller.

Most comments seem to focus on the accuracy here. That does not seem to be the point of the website though.

They merely seem to want to point out that this is the way Google, Meta and anyone else with access to your photos look at those photos. And will abuse access to them by mining them for data to sell you stuff.

I uploaded a picture of Philip Seymour Hoffman from The Big Lebowski, the scene outside Lebowski's house, when the Dude is talking to Bunny by the pool.

"This image shows an adult man, likely in his 40s or 50s, wearing a suit and tie. The location appears to be outdoors, possibly in front of a building or large house, suggested by the architectural details visible in the background and the surrounding trees. He is wearing glasses, and seems to be smiling widely, creating a sense of approachability.

This man is likeyl Caucasian, and could be earning between $100,000 and $500,000 per year. He is likely Christian, probably heterosexual, and leaning toward the Republican party."

It said PSH had an "ageism" bias, and it said a same about me. It also said he and I have a proclivity for gambling and poor diet, lol

Hmm, this seems to just identify the features of the person in the picture and then extrapolates from that generic demographic information, mostly from race. Is it doing more?

e.g. https://i.imgur.com/FlnYwrK.png

Picture of me, outdoors. According to this, I lost 10 years and gain €10k salary. I also moved to the Netherlands, started smoking, don't like computer games and am racist. I might be interested in pottery and painting, also in unhealthy food. The main correct thing is a hetero male. It will try to sell me garden gnomes.

I have no idea who this man is, and am not worried at all for my privacy. Maybe it works better on US inhabitants?

It's hard to know what to make of this. It feels like it's listing stereotypes and superficial guesses. The tool accurately detected my age, my ethnicity and my location. Then it just kind of "vibed out" a bunch of things. Some of those vibes are strangely accurate on their own, but taken together the set of guesses is laughably inaccurate.

It would be interesting to do a similar with a series of photos. You could maybe interface with a users' photo library and select photos grouped by facial recognition. After all, none of these tracking companies are using just one point of data.

This is just a stereotype machine. It incorrectly identified me as Christian, republican, and earning $50-75K, all of which are far off base, and apparently just because I’m white and wearing khakis.

Completely wrong on the political side (maybe because I'm not US-based), but otherwise not bad at all:

- astonishing geoguessing

- very good inference of some characters traits

- and finally quite good ad targeting

EDIT: I tried with a few photos (different people in various settings) and each time I got this: "racial bias towards immigrants" - which was always very false. Intriguing.

EDIT2: different photos of the same person (me) in different settings gives many totally opposed characteristics. Very unreliable, but I guess with several photos (a lifetime's photos in the case of Google) it's another story.

Everyone is saying how awful and terrible this is, but I thought it was quite fascinating.

I showed it some pictures of when I was in a bad headspace and it successfully associated me with introversion, procrastination, isolation, one picture it said an interest of mine was stealing, which was accurate at that time in my youth.

The tech exists and has existed forever, as creepy as it is, I'd rather it be public and accessible than not.

What I’ve learned today is that, apparently, I do not look like a person who earns as much as I do, across several different pictures.

This is a promotion for https://ente.com/#pricing

I uploaded a picture of a board game table from when I was playing with friends last week. Other than the obvious (they’re friends who like playing board games) it got literally everything wrong. It was in Asia and it guessed a western city. The ethnicity, sexuality, median income, and political views it prescribed to us were all hilariously inaccurate.

Mine was super wrong. I was outside and it still guessed a wildly wrong location. It was wrong about my age and my interests.

I don't know much about the Google Vision API that it claims to use, but uploading the same passport photo of mine twice produced wildly different results in the "data" tab.

There are fields like interests, income, biases/predjudices which vary the most so I assume that's just the site pulling things from its own database of racist stereotypes ?

I uploaded a picture, maybe a difficult one. It described somebody like me and like the opposite of me. Every single commercial suggestion was about something I never bought on my life. I got the feeling of those weather forecasts with an icon of cloud, sun and rain for the same location in the same day.

This feels like a data scraping honeypot...

The myriad of trackers available on every website provides much more high value signals than this LLM guesswork.

Uploaded my face pics - the data has 13 fields, 12 were incorrect.(With it only guessing correctly the emotion on the face and some objects in the picture. it was surprising, no photo app has guessed my age with +-20yr diff.). Pretty useless demo imo

Is this one of those things like the old Facebook games where people were answering personal questions that can be used to guess all kind of secret answers for taking over accounts? Are people actually uploading real photos of themselves here?

Very generic. Shows the same obvious info for two completely different people. "interests in tech... struggles with procrastination...". Also funny - red shirt means you are Labor (in Australia).

Lazy. It just spits out demographic info.

I will say I am impressed with Instagram advertising me music software. I really like making music and I’ve bought quite a few things off of Instagram ads.

That’s advertising done right!

Ente photos competes with Apple Photos and Google photos. It is also more open and you can share an album link with someone and they can add their photos without signing up.

Execution may have a few blind spots and mistakes but I get the idea behind the message. I’m sure the big companies have a lot more data and ways to do this better too

It just describes what's in the photo and then some completely wrong/random facts about self-esteem, income, religion, etc.

You inferred this from the photo?

> He is presumed to be agnostic, heterosexual, and politically aligned with the Democratic party

If they really see it like this site shows then I am all good as it got everything wrong besides my skin colour.

About as accurate as a horoscope. Sherlock Holmes it is not.

It got the location (exif, I guess) and was able to identify that I was a balding mediocre middle-aged guy, but the more specific it got the more wrong (and insulting) it was.

"He appears tired and introspective. He may exhibit biases such as confirmation bias, anchoring bias, in-group bias and out-group bias. His interests could involve reading, hiking, and programming, coupled with less constructive activities like smoking, excessive drinking, and gambling.

This individual seems to possess low self-esteem, exhibits introversion, a lack of emotional stability, and low self-control, making them susceptible to targeted advertising."

Thanks a fucking lot, robot.

not too great, i submitted a photo taken of me at graduation. it got the location totally wrong and was around 50%-70% accurate on my hobbies and interests. it was able to correctly guess my sexuality and ethnicity, which is rather unsurprising.

Seems like nonsense to me. I'd love to see the prompt. From one of the sample images:

"They likely share an agnostic worldview and identify as heterosexual. Their clothing is casual, and their interests revolve around skateboarding, music, and hanging out. Given their age and attire, they likely lean towards a liberal political affiliation. They display signs of classism and ageism, with potential for racial profiling and stereotype threat." - Wow, really?! Were the system instructions asking to be as judgmental as possible?

Also it's a blatant ad considering the source.

It labeled every single person in my area as having “confirmation bias and in-group bias”

I tried and apart from correctly identifying what the person in the photo was wearing and probably doing, it was wrong on all counts.

I uploaded fantasy pictures which had amusing results ;-)

They wax poetic but our ai overloads are not quite here yet.

* It's an ad / undisclosed conflict of interest. (They appear to be a photo hosting site in competition with, e.g., Google Photos.)

* The TOS deigns itself to claim forced arb. over you.

(AFAICT, it's just running uploads through an AI? I don't think the actual Google product has these features, we've just asked an AI to hallucinate the biases of two people sitting under a tree, but now (this is according to the actual linked site) — they're probably lesbians.

I.e., it seems like the likely thing here is that the (undisclosed) prompt that generated this is from them, not from Google. Or, showing your work goes a long way towards building the trust that this isn't simple fear mongering, and while I think there's a good argument for being careful of what one uploads to a corporation on the Internet, "upload to this corporation instead" feels like a "fool me once…" type of solution.)

it used they/them pronouns for me...

wait, is that actually good? or is it just a way to vaguely refer to someone without being inherently wrong?

Like others have pointed out, it reads like a horoscope. The example images give a reasonable approximation of what I'd profile them as too, but after trying a few of my own picture it's clearly BS. Garbage in, garbage out.

This "use LLMs as psychometric/political polling substitutes" idea seems to have jumpstarted a weird cottage industry of "synthetic" surveys. The model is pattern-matching on superficial visual cues and dressing it up as insight (I have a long beared and hence I vote for the green party).

Nate Silver put it well recently: [AI polls are fake polls][1].

An LLM inferring personality from a photo is even further down that chain of abstraction. That's not profiling, it's stereotyping with extra steps.

[1]: https://www.natesilver.net/p/ai-polls-are-fake-polls

> Interests: Hiking, photography, travel, gambling, substance abuse, binge-watching

> Biases: Ageism, fatphobia, colorism, classism

excuse me?

This tool doesn't work well at all, it identified some "low income" people and then said it recommended them Patagonia clothing???

Also, the people didn't look "low income" at all but they were black, so maybe this tool is also racist.

From the generated descriptions of the sample images, it looks like their prompt is asking for a vaguely center-right gloss on demographics? Is that the agenda of the site operators, or an appeal to presumed paranoid libertarian site visitor?

I uploaded a picture of my growing bald spot (sigh…). The only thing they were able to see was the EXIF location data, which I already knew about.

I am sure something involving my face would be more scary but I kind of don’t want to provide someone else training data of my private photos.

This is very silly. It's just a combination of that Derren Brown astrology experiment [1] and madlibs.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk

You guys are completely missing the point. It's not about getting your details right. It's about what will be done with you when the AI's inferences are wrong.

This is obviously dishonest fearmongering, but I kinda support it if it helps non-tech people develop a sense of the type of private information tech companies are trying to collect.

But it's clearly bullshit.

I uploaded a picture with poor lighting and wearing dark cloths. Got almost everything wrong... .... Reading, coding, martial arts, substance abuse, illegal hacking, violent thoughts

Except for guessing the right continent (not that remarkable), mine is so majestically wrong that I would either dislike or fully hate all of the products I got recommended.

correctly guessed I was funny

Interests

Attending punk shows, street art, urban exploration, drug use, vandalism, recklessness

Yeah, astonishingly wrong in just about every way (except race). If anything, I think I'm less worried than before.

The results were laughable. AI certainly has useful applications, but it also became astrology combined with slot machines for many tech-inclined folks.

Now combine it with ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com

Doing a 20-way parlay with averages of each country will almost always fail, this product is shit.

that was complete bullshit lmao

"i have approximate knowledge of many things"

Mine was way off! I uploaded a photo of myself reading a book outdoors in Ashkelon (Israel). It got everything other than my religion wrong--and even that was half right. I'm Sefardi. And it should know that Jews don't shave with razors! (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaving_in_Judaism) It recommended products including "Dollar Shave Club" -- to a Jewish man with a very full and long beard.

I think this "technology" is a big nothingburger.

And "Low Self-Esteem" Ha! I love myself.

> The man appears to be of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, possibly with an income range of $50,000 to $80,000 USD. It's plausible he identifies with Judaism, with a heterosexual orientation and potentially leaning towards a liberal political stance. He might harbor social biases related to ageism and classism, as well as racial biases stemming from cultural differences and stereotyping. He wears an expression of thoughtful interest, clad in casual attire. He might have interests in reading, learning, and spending time in nature. Conversely, he may dislike activities like excessive consumerism, engaging in superficial social interactions, or feeling pressured to conform.

> The person seems to have low self-esteem and average emotional stability hence we can target them with self-help and social networking type of products and services, such as guided meditation apps like Headspace, confidence-boosting courses like Skillshare, online therapy like Talkspace, and motivational podcasts like The Tony Robbins Podcast, and also personal grooming products such as Old Spice deodorant, Dollar Shave Club razors, Clinique skincare, and Levi's jeans.

> The man appears to be Asian, with an estimated income range of USD 50,000 - USD 75,000.

> These people seem to have low self-esteem, is slightly introverted, has high emotional stability, is not very adventurous and does have some self-control hence we can target them with wooden puzzles, adventure novels, travel products, personalized houseware, such as Melissa & Doug Wooden Puzzles, Penguin Classics Adventure Novels, Osprey Travel Backpacks, Viski Personalized Whiskey Glasses, credit cards, life insurance, home internet and streaming services, such as Capital One Credit Cards, State Farm Life Insurance, Xfinity Home Internet, Netflix Streaming Services.

Hahaha no, what the fuck. Every part of the response was wrong except the objective race/clothes/setting.

So we're racist just because we're white but we also supposedly vote for the 'liberal' parties which call us all racist because we happen to be white. We also have low self-esteem, are introverts and more of such nonsense. All that from photo showing profiles in a forest with the sun casting rays between the trunks, no faces visible, no EXIF data in the photo. Oh, we're also supposed to be in Nova Scotia.

The only thing it got correct is the fact that we're white or 'Caucasian', insert the currently mandated term. The rest is total nonsense. They insist they can target us with ads for ecological dog food and other pet paraphernalia. Good luck with that, we tend to block all ads and our photos are not stored anywhere within reach of these data parasites.

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I've fed it few photos. The conclusions was an absolute trash. Well it did distinguish skin color and body build type. Congrats /s