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Google said Wednesday it is blurring the faces of
people in street scenes pictured at its free online mapping service.
The US Internet colossus said it
was testing the technology in updated "Street View"
pictures woven into its map of Manhattan and, if successful, would
put it to work across its mapping website.
While blurring faces may reduce
complaints that snapshots of street life posted with Google Maps
results could violate people's privacy, that is not the motivation
for applying the technology, a Google spokeswoman told AFP.
"It is something we have
been looking into for quite some time," she said.
"The purpose of Street View
isn't looking at people, it's looking at buildings and locations.
Obviously, we want to take steps in protecting people's privacy, but
from the beginning we've been committed to doing this."
Google has been working for a
year on a way to automatically detect and blur faces in pictures,
company software engineer Andrea Frome wrote in a Google blog post.
"Working at Street
View-scale is a tough challenge that required us to advance
state-of-the-art automatic face detection," Frome wrote.
"We continue working hard to
improve it as we roll it out for our existing and future
imagery."
Frome pointed out that Manhattan
street view pictures were also modified to allow people to look up
to admire skyscrapers and the cityscape.
Street View photos were added to
Google online maps of major US cities a year ago.
--AFP
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