Google s AI can block shoulder snooping

London Nov 28 (IANS) Google has reportedly developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered technology that alerts users in real time when someone looks at their phone over the shoulder.

Called "electronic screen protector" the software can use the front-facing camera on a smartphone to pick out faces and identify anyone who is not the owner The Register reported on Tuesday.

Such a technology could be immensely useful as snooping is not just irritating. It can also result in loss of data in certain cases.

The technique -- which appears to be just an academic project at this stage rather than an upcoming feature -- will be presented at the December 4-9 Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in California the report said.

A technology to prevent over-shoulder snooping however is not new.

More than a year ago HP introduced laptops with its "Sure View" technology designed to prevent visual hacking with the press of a single button. It obscures the screen unless viewed face-on making it difficult for others to view information on the screen.

Google s electronic screen protector however identifies the snooper. And it works quite fast.

It takes two milliseconds to detect each person s gaze 47 milliseconds for each face recognition operation and an average of 115 milliseconds per frame for face detection -- not enough time for a human to steal much of a glance let alone to read private messages the report said.

--IANS
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