YouTube service introduces a new feature that will allow you to "cover up" the face in the video, such a message was posted on the official blog of the service from Google. This will help ensure anonymity for individuals who may fear disclosing their identity. Experts say that such a tool will not give one hundred percent impossibility to recognize the person filmed on the video.
Google notes that there is currently some globalization trend that has affected video resources as well. A site like YouTube should protect human rights around the world, because it is the most popular video platform in the United States and one of the leading worldwide, uploading up to 72 hours of video per hour. Publicity and openness are not always safe, so users should not be afraid that the whole world will see their faces. Google developers said that to ensure anonymity, an algorithm is used that identifies facial features, after which the found area is blurred, "noise" and pixelation are added.
To activate the new function, you need to select a video, click the button in the site tools "Improve video", then click "Additional functions", in the opened area select the option "Blur all faces" and click the "Apply" button. On YouTube, when editing a video, a preview is possible, so you can make sure that faces are not identifiable, then you can delete the original video.
Amy Mitchell, deputy head of Project for Excellence in Journalism, notes that YouTube has become a new source of interaction, allowing people to know about events. The creators of the video service admit that this was the main reason for introducing a new feature that allows you to hide a person's identity.
However, “blurring” faces is still not a complete protection, because height, weight, as well as the environment and even the date the video was shot can become additional details for identifying. In addition, this technology has not yet been fully mastered and in some frames it cannot recognize a face, and, accordingly, hide it.
