Show HN: Loti – Remove revenge porn using facial recognition on adult sites

https://goloti.com/

by lja • 4 years ago

70 67 4 years ago

lja19• 4 years ago

Hi I'm Luke, co-founder.

People are warned that an image lives on the internet forever, this has been especially true for images that are not consensually taken or shared. We’re fixing that.

We created Loti (https://goloti.com), a service that uses facial recognition to help users search, find, and reclaim non-consensual intimate images and videos using a streamlined DMCA process we facilitate in our software.

Over 10 million people are victims of non-consensual image sharing in the United States alone. Those are just the people that were even aware that their images were being shared; research shows that up to 30% of victims were hacked or victims of hidden cameras and are unaware.

Our goal is to bring peace of mind that your private images stay private.

hirak2• 4 years ago

Hi, I am Hirak. I am a co-founder of Loti.

Loti uses state of the art facial recognition algorithm built with proprietary models. It takes into consideration a dozen facial characteristics in more than 1 angles to find matches from a collection of more than 50 million data sets. We keep adding millions of new data every month to make sure we don't miss out any privacy breach of your photo.

braingenious8• 4 years ago

How did you arrive at the number of over 2.6 Billion victims of revenge porn? 33% of people seems like an incredible number.

lja19• 4 years ago

Here's the quick read: https://www.fastcompany.com/90467411/shocking-study-finds-1-...

Here's the real study: https://www.naag.org/attorney-general-journal/an-update-on-t...

Also, I don't think these numbers could be extrapolated to every country/region/culture on earth but they do seem to hold for european and english speaking markets.

braingenious8• 4 years ago

Separate question:

We’ve established that your website’s claim that there are 2.6 billion victims of revenge porn isn’t shared by people that work at Loti and it’s more likely ~400 million.

Given that fact, if you were able to get 1% of those people to subscribe (4 million) at $8/mo, you would be taking in $32,000,000 per month ($384,000,000 per year).

Would you not be the most profitable entity in the business of revenge porn?

2Gkashmiri• 4 years ago

Why should it be a "subscription"?

Its not like your content once id'd and removed can't be uploaded again so why would there be recurring fees?

schroeding• 4 years ago

How high is the recall and the precision of your facial recognition ML model? :)

Am4TIfIsER0ppos2• 4 years ago

Submit clear detailed pictures of your face in order to find porn of yourself.

Do you think that is a good idea?

lja19• 4 years ago

Would love clarity, what do you mean? That is the whole point of the service. If you don't submit a clear picture of yourself, there isn't any way for us to search.

shubb• 4 years ago

I guess the concern is that you are going to link an anonymous pornographic video to a real identity you have confirmed with ID. Clearly a big security risk there that needs to be handled carefully.

For instance, if your alert email contains a link to the video, a bad actor who also had access to that email account now potentially had a blackmail opportunity.

I am sure you handle all this carefully but you have to admit it is fraught.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos2• 4 years ago

You are making a great database. Ripe for governments, spies, stalkers, and trolls. Being as paranoid as I am I wonder which I assume this falls into.

KomoD• 4 years ago

I feel like this can be easily misused

thot_experiment4• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what (1) alert per month means, but I definitely think that $8/mo to find porn with your preferred facial characteristics based on some uploaded images seems like a more viable business model. I'm certain there are people who would pay to have a digest of pron with lookalikes of their favorite actresses/whatever mailed to them regularly.

lja19• 4 years ago

1 alert a month means that we'll automatically scan our database once a month and send you an email. It's more of an insurance policy to make sure we didn't find anything for you that month.

lja19• 4 years ago

We have protections in place to prevent misuse but we are aware that prevention will be a large hill for us to climb and we're working on it.

toomuchtodo2• 4 years ago

How do you confirm the identity of your customer to ensure your DMCA takedown notices are legitimate?

How do you programmatically discern between non-consensual adult images being shared against the subject's wishes versus images where they are somewhere public, don't own the copyright to the photo, but the law does not require the copyright holder remove or take down the image?

Cool idea, might need to pivot, regardless an interesting space to be in in these times.

EDIT: Appreciate the replies!

hirak2• 4 years ago

We have an error-proof system in place that follows specific protocols and instructions provided by each individual host websites. This helps us filter out 90% non-legitimate takedown notices.

abrookewood• 4 years ago

"We have an error-proof system" ... yeah, no you don't. Especially if you're using ML.

lja19• 4 years ago

Confirmation is lower right now as we are working to get people into the app, a DMV/government license before people know who we are may be a too big of a pill to swallow for a starting company.

We do have ML models running in the background to detect abuse and the accounts are flagged to management to reach out to those customers. I don't want to go through all the cat-and-mouse strategies we may have to avoid people gaming them.

If someone has taken pictures for a company and given their model release for that image and its made its way to an adult site, then the individual should not initiate a DMCA. This is something we make our customers aware of before they DMCA content. Also, we know from first hand experience that site operators are quick to deny a DMCA if they do own rights for it. We've talked to them about this very situation.

cvalka3• 4 years ago

Why is the DMCA even relevant here? Who's the copyright holder?

toomuchtodo2• 4 years ago

Not founders, so I can only provide my interpretation. Some states have revenge porn laws, some providers will remove content that is non consensual and of an adult nature if notified, so I presume they’re using DMCA as a proxy for all of the above. “Takedown requests” is probably better verbiage.

Depending on the circumstances, who the copyright holder is is immaterial.

Also, IANAL! Not legal advice!

lja19• 4 years ago

They are considered unauthorized models.

thot_experiment4• 4 years ago

I bet y'all would make a lot more money charging $8/mo to find porn with the exact facial characteristic someone is looking for.

Don't get me wrong, revenge porn is bad, but charging people money to take it down seems, well I guess better than nothing but let's hope a nonprofit starts maintaining a database like this and completely eliminates any market this site may capture.

Also abusing the DMCA for censorship, even in pursuit of a noble cause is harmful to society, though maybe not more harmful than revenge porn?

I'm really curious how our culture will continue to reckon with the ideas that

a) There are intimate images extant of many people. Many will become most.

b) AI powered face swapping and image generation will make arbitrary porn trivial on home-gamer GPUs in a few years.

lja19• 4 years ago

The idea of charging $8/mo for someone to look at anyone's photos online is pretty far off brand for us. We're really looking to help people find just their own photos. I do agree the market would be larger but that's not something we're interested in doing. That breaks ethical barriers for us.

We have to charge money to cover our expenses, most people don't realize how expensive GPU's are and that's the only way to do this cost effectively at scale. Even a non-profit would incur enormous expenses because there is just no way to do this cheap.

There is no abuse of the DMCA process here. Customers are asked to sign an affidavit and we don't allow them to DMCA outside of their facial profiles.

thot_experiment4• 4 years ago

I just don't feel like your motives can possibly be aligned with victims if you're trying to make money off victims.

RE: DMCA abuse, it's probably within the letter of the law, the law itself is broken.

Bonus question: How does this all deal with twins? What's the miss rate on facial recognition anyway?

Centigonal• 4 years ago

I think this idea has potential, but HN might be far off from your target audience.

lja19• 4 years ago

Thanks! I've been a member for a decade and just wanted to share what I'm working on in data science.

gardenhedge• 4 years ago

Hopefully I never have to use this for me but I am glad it exists

AtlasBarfed• 4 years ago

And here we are, defensive AI to aggressive/offensive/assault AI.

So the cloud providers will:

- make bank from the social networks hosting your content/likeness

- make bank from the offensive/exploitation AIs trying to exploit your content/likeness for gain

- make bank from the detection/defensive AIs looking for exploits of your content/likeness

The laws will never catch up.

SRO1• 4 years ago

ethical. It is obvious to do on a positive way by far.

dnhk21• 4 years ago

recognition & this is good for everyone.

siddiquezamann• 4 years ago

affordable and much better than other sites. Good experience.

rabiul660660• 4 years ago

Good experience.

nikau• 4 years ago

facial recognition on adult sites

phrasing

IYasha• 4 years ago

The fact that someone is processing so much biometrical data makes me feel very uneasy. I know governments and 3-letter agencies do this for a long time, but still. Not exactly sure what revenge porn is, but I think I get the idea.

deathclassic2• 4 years ago

Are you fucking stupid? You literally just built a porn reverse image search tool. Think about it, all you need is a screen shot of a single frame of porn and you can find links to other vids with that person. This is a godsend for coomers. Not to mention, the abuse potential of something like this is insane. Now anyone can just use a girls facebook profile or linkedin pic to find nudes - perfect for fapping or for blackmail. Copyright isn't gonna stop offiline copies from being taken, and the fact that most NCII out there exists of a subject that is unaware of said content being published, hence the people that need your tool the most proabably won't know it exists - until its too late. It's so funny how you're trying to pass of this tool as "socially beneficial" when all it's gonna do is make the problem worse.

The internet and digital cameras being available to everyone was a mistake, when I come to power I'm just outright banning any transmission or storage of any photos of naked human bodies with the exception of medical reference pics. Or I'll just ban cellphones and home computers from civillian use entirely.

EDIT: I probably wouldn't ban the internet or home computers, but I'd at least completely ban porn, and use a tool like OPs to enforce such a ban with extreme prejudice. Anyone hosting or running a site with such content would face years of hard labor

dismantlethesun• 4 years ago

There are many other sites like this built to facilitate the removal of revenge porn and sending DMCA requests to sites who use the material of amateur and professional performers.

It’s good for you to shine a light on the problematics aspects of this tech but this is a decades old industry so I think you are being a bit harsh by treating the poster as if they are creating a new problem.

deathclassic2• 4 years ago

OP did create a tool that could easily be used for abuse and blackmail. Of course, it could also be used to solve the problem if the government just grew a pair and banned porn outright and punished anyone caught hosting or producing it harshly.

ElvinQD• 4 years ago

This my idea