In 2020 he left his job working on Google Assistant and also stopped backing up all of his images to Google Photos.
But Mohandas struggled to articulate to wider audiences why they should reconsider relying on Google Photos, despite all the conveniences it offers.
One of the first photos Mohandas tried uploading was a selfie with his wife and daughter in front of a temple in Indonesia.
The company says it doesn’t sell the content stored in Google Photos to third parties or use it for advertising purposes.
If Theyseeyourphotos motivates you to switch from Google Photos to another image storage service, the transition might not be totally smooth.
Vishnu Mohandas, a software engineer, made the decision to leave Google in a number of ways after discovering that the tech giant had momentarily assisted the US military in creating artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze drone footage. He quit his work on Google Assistant in 2020 and stopped using Google Photos to backup all of his photos. Even if his material wasn’t directly related to the Pentagon project, he was concerned that it might be used to train AI systems. Mohandas believed, “I have no control over any of the future outcomes that this will enable.”. “Shouldn’t I be more responsible now?”.
Based in Bengaluru, India, Mohandas, who learned to program on his own, made the decision to create an alternative end-to-end encrypted, open source service for storing and sharing photographs. Something “more wholesome, private, and trustworthy,” he claims. He created the profitable paid service Ente, which claims to have over 100,000 users, many of whom are already privacy-conscious. However, Mohandas found it difficult to explain to broader audiences why, in spite of all the benefits it provides, they ought to think twice before depending on Google Photos.
An Ente intern then had an idea one weekend in May: Show people what some of Google’s AI models can learn by analyzing images. Ente launched https://Theyseeyourphotos.com last month as a marketing gimmick and website intended to undermine Google’s technology. The website allows users to upload any photo, which is then processed by a Google Cloud computer vision program to produce an incredibly detailed three-paragraph description of it. The AI model is prompted to record minute details in the uploaded photos by entering them. ).
Selfies with his wife and daughter in front of an Indonesian temple were among the first images Mohandas attempted to upload. Google’s investigation was thorough, even identifying the precise Casio F-91W watch model his wife was sporting. Then, according to Mohandas, the AI made an odd observation: It pointed out that Casio F-91W watches are frequently connected to Islamic extremists. According to Mohandas, “we had to modify the prompts to make it a little more wholesome but still spooky.”. Ente began requesting brief, objective outputs from the model; nothing sinister.
The same family photo that was uploaded to Theyseeyourphotos now yields a more generic result that includes the temple’s name and the surrounding “luxurious greenery and partly cloudy sky.”. However, Mohandas and his family are still assumed to have “joint contentment” on their faces and middle-class parents who are probably of South Asian heritage by the AI. “The woman’s watch shows a time of about 2 pm, which corroborates with the image metadata,” it observes, judging their attire as “suitable for sightseeing.”. “.”.
Ente allows users to experiment on Theyseeyourphotos using a variety of stock photos if they would rather not upload their own photos. Google’s computer vision can detect delicate details in them, such as a child’s temporary leaf tattoo or a person’s tattoo that seems to be the letter G. “The fact that it is only one picture is the main point,” Mohandas states. He hopes the website makes users consider how much Google, or any AI company, could discover about them by similarly examining thousands of their cloud-based photos.
The transfer may not go entirely smoothly if Theyseeyourphotos encourages you to move from Google Photos to another photo storage platform. According to Mohandas, Google compresses and splits up files, making it challenging for users to move their photo collection to another location. Additionally, he claims that the company’s Android app store, Google Play, has repeatedly flagged Ente’s app for problems like opaque pricing, which Mohandas claims are false. According to Smith of Google, the company values the feedback and is always working to improve its services.
In Mohandas’ native Malayalam, “ente” means “mine,” but it has drawbacks. File sharing and search capabilities might not be as sophisticated yet because the service is small and open source. A user may not be able to access their photo library if they misplace or forget their password, which also serves as an encryption key. According to Mohandas, he has faith in Ente to protect his own family’s pictures, which maintains two distinct private backups for users. However, Google has decades of experience making sure that images don’t vanish in a flood.
However, in some respects, Mohandas is particularly concerned about that. He fears that the visual record of humanity will be mined in ways that are beyond his control or prediction. According to him, “Google is a company that I believe will be there in 20 years.”. His daughter’s personality and what brings her joy or sorrow are shown in pictures taken today. “Anybody with access to this data—advertisers, dating websites, employers, and industries that don’t yet exist but will benefit from psychological profiles—could use this information to manipulate her decades from now,” suggests Mohandas.
While acknowledging that he may come across as unduly paranoid to some, he asserts that “we don’t know how the future will turn out, and it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, and it doesn’t hurt to have an option.”. “.”.
This story first surfaced on wired . com.
