This AI Tool Erases Your Image From The Webcam Feed In Real-Time

Dhir Acharya - Feb 25, 2020

Many people choose to cover the built-in webcam on their laptops to avoid being spied on. However, this man has come up with an AI tool that's a lot better.

Many people choose to cover the built-in webcam on their laptops to avoid being spied on. However, this man has come up with a better yet more complicated solution: a browser that erases people from the live webcam feed in real-time. His new browser is powered by AI.

The man in question is Jason Mayes, a web engineer at Google. He developed the Disappearing-People tool using TensorFlow and Javascript, both of which are free, open-source software of Google that allows him to apply deep learning and AI to apps.

This AI Tool Erases Your Image From The Webcam Feed In Real-Time

In this case, the neural network is responsible for identifying a video’s static background imagery to develop a clean plate, which is a version of that image but doesn’t feature humans moving in the frame. It doesn’t require the feed to be people-free to start with.

In this instance, the neural network is trained to identify people, from which it can produce a clean plate of the background of a webcam feed. However, it can also actively delete people when they walk into and move around in the frame. The deleting process takes place in real-time and leaves everything else in the live footage to remain the same.

This AI Tool Erases Your Image From The Webcam Feed In Real-Time

There is now a test version of this tool that you can try out in your browser through Mayes’ GitHub repository. For now, the results are not perfect but it will get better over time as the neural network continues to improve.

Ultimately, we could use the tool to erase people from live webcams installed in busy landmarks across the globe, but it makes more sense for personal use. Of course, you can choose to not use the tool and simply cover your webcam to protect your privacy, but what about your smartphone or tablet? Theoretically, the tool could help make sure you will never be caught on camera without you knowing.

The best thing about this tool is its real-time performance. And as we have mentioned above, this tool can be applied in more fields other than just protecting personal privacy.