Incidents gathered from public reporting around the world. Each one links to the articles it came from. None of it is a finding that anyone broke the law.
Reports people file about their own experience are not shown here and never will be without their agreement. Tell us what happened to you.
44 incidents closest to “NeoFace Reveal” · matched on meaning · public reporting
The system could identify strangers via smart glasses and collected biometric data from users and non-users without consent.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Harvard student Yuen Ler Chow created FaceTag, a facial recognition app that allows users to scan fellow students' faces to obtain their names and contact information. The app has raised privacy and ethical concerns among students and faculty, though Chow has implemented a permission feature to address some issues. No actual harm has been reported.
4 source articles · read the reporting →
The facial recognition system matched Angela Lipps to a suspect's photo, leading to her arrest and detention.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Rona Wang, an MIT graduate, used Playground AI to generate a professional LinkedIn photo. The AI altered her appearance, giving her lighter skin and blue eyes, making her look Caucasian. The incident sparked discussion about racial bias in AI. Playground AI's founder acknowledged the issue and expressed a desire to fix it.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Facebook removed over 900 accounts, pages, and groups associated with The BL, a network that used AI-generated profile photos to spread pro-Trump content to 55 million users. Researchers from Graphika and DFRLab found that the network used generative adversarial networks to create fake faces, marking the first large-scale use of AI-generated images in an influence operation. The accounts were operated from Vietnam and the US, and were linked to The Epoch Times. Facebook's action came after the researchers identified the inauthentic activity.
6 source articles · read the reporting →
AI facial recognition — Wrongful Arrest Leads to $10M Lawsuit The Korea Daily
1 source article · read the reporting →
Rona Wang attempted to use an AI editing tool to generate a LinkedIn profile photo. Instead, the tool produced an unintended image. Wang shared the result on Twitter, expressing dissatisfaction.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
Hangzhou police have cracked a case in which a gang allegedly used an overseas multimodal AI model to create face-swapped videos that defeated facial-recognition login checks on major platforms. The group is accused of stealing users' photos, generating videos of actions such as blinking or turning the head, and then accessing victims' accounts to collect personal information, which was sold to fraud gangs for nearly 200,000 yuan. Four suspects were arrested in Anhui, Guizhou and Zhejiang in August and placed in criminal detention. Police warned the public to manage personal information securely and urged platforms to strengthen facial authentication.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Una supuesta coincidencia de reconocimiento facial con IA llevó a prisión por seis meses a una mujer inocente - Univision
Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old grandmother, was arrested in Tennessee while babysitting a neighbor's children after AI facial recognition software flagged her social media photo as a possible match to a suspect in Fargo bank robberies. She was jailed for months and extradited to North Dakota before charges were dropped after bank records showed she was in Tennessee at the time of the robberies. Lipps is now suing the city of Fargo and a police detective for $10 million over the arrest and its consequences.
1 source article · read the reporting →
In April 2024, anonymous Facebook pages sponsored deepfake videos of Bulgarian actor Kamen Donev and other public figures to advertise a joint pain cream. The manipulated footage, taken from a television appearance, used AI-generated audio and altered lip movements to falsely depict Donev endorsing the product. Clicking the ad led to a fabricated article imitating a news site, which served as a sales platform for a product not available in pharmacies.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Meta's AI image generator on Instagram was found to be making everyone Asian regardless of prompt. After The Verge reported the issue, the tool temporarily returned an error when users tried to generate images of Asian people. The feature was later restored, but the underlying racial bias issue persisted. Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
2 source articles · read the reporting →
Lockport City School District deployed SN Technologies' AEGIS face and weapons detection system in January 2020. Parents and the New York Civil Liberties Union allege the system misidentifies Black people more often than white people and falsely detects weapons such as broom handles. A lawsuit was filed against the New York State Education Department seeking to ban facial recognition in schools. SN Technologies denied misleading the district.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Meta removed 28 AI-generated Instagram profiles, including one of a 'proud Black queer momma of two', after widespread social media outrage. Critics accused the company of 'digital blackface as a service'. Meta stated it will continue to push AI-generated content on its platforms.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
The face-swapping app Facemega, owned by Chinese company Wondershare, promoted a sexually suggestive advertisement featuring the face of actor Emma Watson without her consent. The ad, which showed a woman with Watson's face in a provocative pose, ran on Facebook until it was removed following media coverage. Apple and Google also removed the app from their stores for policy violations. An attorney commented that such deepfake technology could be used as a weapon against women, highlighting the potential for reputational and privacy harms.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
Researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University used a convolutional neural network to classify facial photographs of 1,856 Chinese men aged 18 to 55, half of whom were criminals, and reported 89.5% accuracy in distinguishing criminals from non-criminals. The study, published on arXiv, identifies facial features the network relied on and raises ethical concerns about potential misuse in pre-crime surveillance. No deployment or actual harm is reported.
8 source articles · read the reporting →
Duke University researchers developed PULSE, an AI tool that upscales blurry face photos using Nvidia's StyleGAN model. When tested, it generated a white face from a pixelated image of Barack Obama, revealing racial bias. The bias stemmed from StyleGAN's training data being predominantly white and the evaluation dataset CelebA being 90% white. The researchers acknowledged the issue and updated their paper, while Nvidia stated it is working to mitigate bias.
2 source articles · read the reporting →
MIT researchers used YouTube videos, including one of Nick Sullivan, to train a model called Speech2Face that generates faces from voices. Sullivan discovered his data was used without his consent and expressed surprise. The researchers defended their use of public data, but the incident raised ethical questions about consent in AI research.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
AI Portrait Ars, developed by researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, is reported to have generated Renaissance-style portraits that lightened the skin and altered the facial features of people of colour. The tool, trained on tens of thousands of paintings from the Western artistic tradition, was criticised for reproducing that bias in its data set. The creators acknowledged the bias but did not respond to a request for comment.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
In December 2019, Kneron researchers tested facial recognition systems at a high-speed rail station in China, Schiphol Airport, point-of-sale terminals, and a mobile phone. Using a high-quality 3D mask and a photo on a phone screen, they successfully deceived the systems, gaining access and making purchases. The survey highlighted security shortfalls in many commercial facial recognition solutions.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
MBN, a South Korean cable channel, introduced an AI-powered news anchor based on anchor Kim Ju-ha. The AI, named AI Kim, was created through deep learning using 10 hours of video of Kim. It presents news in her voice and manner, intended to allow 24/7 broadcasting.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
Facebook removed two networks of fake accounts spreading propaganda, one originating from China and one from the Philippines. The Chinese network used AI-generated faces created through Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to create fake profiles and evade detection. The campaign targeted the US election and Southeast Asia, pushing pro-China content. Facebook took down the accounts and published a report with Graphika.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
DiveFace is a face-recognition dataset published in 2019 with 139,677 images of about 24,000 people. The authors say the images came from Flickr via the MegaFace and YFCC100M datasets and were automatically labelled by gender and ethnicity. Exposing.ai found that many of the photos carry Creative Commons licences which prohibit derivative use, suggesting the dataset may have been assembled without proper permission. The dataset remains available from the authors' GitHub page.
3 source articles · read the reporting →
The Zao face-swapping app, developed by Momo, sparked privacy and fraud fears after its launch in China on 29 August 2019. The app's terms and conditions initially gave the developer permanent rights to use users' images, which experts said broke Chinese law. Momo subsequently apologized and deleted the controversial clause. Alipay assured users that deepfakes could not bypass its facial recognition payment system.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
The FindFace facial recognition app is being used by users of the Russian website Dvach to identify porn actresses and sex workers from images and match them to their VKontakte accounts. The users then spam the victims' families and friends with the information, aiming to out them. Several victims complained to FindFace, but the founder stated there was no way to prevent the misuse.
7 source articles · read the reporting →
