A trio of Stanford graduate students have made a powerful AI that can guess the location of a wide variety of photos with remarkable accuracy.
Known as Predicting Image Geolocations (PIGEON), the AI is trained on Google Street View and can effortlessly pinpoint where photos were taken, even outwitting some of the best human “geoguessers.”
The developers claim their AI can correctly guess the country where a photo was taken 95 percent of the time, and usually within a startling 25 miles of the real location.
They also note some of its potentially game-changing applications, such as assisting in biological surveys or quickly identifying roads with downed power lines.
For all its very useful potential, though, it sounds like a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, with some experts fearing the abuse of such AI tools in the hands of the wrong people.
“From a privacy point of view, your location can be a very sensitive set of information,” Jay Stanley at the American Civil Liberties Union told NPR.
Hellbound and Down 