PimEyes: facial recognition tool for anyone on the Internet

What is PimEyes?

PimEyes is a column of free facial recognition tools that allow people to find pictures of themselves or others on the internet. However, you’ll need an image of the person first – which you can easily get through Facebook or Google Images. This feature has received criticism from security experts. PimEyes describes itself as a privacy tool to help prevent abuse of images, to find out which websites your images are being posted on.

Poland-based PimEyes website founded in 2017 was commercialized last year. It currently has 6,000 registered users. However, up to now, the website has officially been operated for free. I have tried 1 photo and it can accurately find the websites that post that image.

PimEyes service is similar to Clearview AI. Of course, ClearviewAI is in trouble for user privacy, having amassed more than three billion photos from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which were approved by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and 600 other law enforcement agencies around the world. used to identify suspects. Few of us have seen it in action, as it is only available to organizations willing to pay for it

Last week, that changed. PimEyes, A new facial recognition search engine, now offers anyone with internet access a freely accessible demonstration. Upload a photo of someone, and it will show you all of that person’s others in its database. Pay 10$ and one can access links to photo pages. It has never been so easy to find someone’s photo.

According to ‘s website PimEye, images uploaded to the site are “never saved for user information”. Instead, it says it uses facial tracing – key features – that are encrypted and stored temporarily on servers.

Amazon and IBM have stopped the game

Meanwhile, two companies working at the forefront of facial recognition — Amazon and IBM — have publicly stated their concerns over the misuse of the technology. Amazon banned the use of its software by law enforcement for a year, while IBM backed out of the game altogether.

At first glance, PimEyes seems harmless. Uploading a photo of yourself returns your other photos from its database. (Unlike Clearview, it doesn’t show photos from the major social networking sites, especially Facebook.) The results page looks like a Google image search for your own name. But the important thing is, even without a name, it still finds you with great accuracy.

How to use PimEyes

By Uploading an image of a person’s face PimEyes, you’ll find many images of them from publicly accessible sites like Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress blogs, and news sites. I tried adding an image of myself to it and it was scary how quickly it came up with other images that were similar to the original and similar to the original.

Although the original image is only about 130×130, PimEyes uses it artificial intelligence find Dan Truong’s face very accurately. If you want to know which website posted the images, you need to upgrade to Premium.

You might need to upload a picture of a movie star you like, or your ex, then find 10 girls who look like her and text them, says PimEyes co-founder Alexander Kabakov said.

PimEyes has advertised the website as a solution for customers to know which websites their images are appearing on. These types of websites looking for facial recognition aren’t new. However, depending on the purpose of use to evaluate the level of this feature is good or bad.