General Intelligence
You Can Buy a Random Facial Recognition Photo on China’s Black Market for Just $.07
Sellers are offering packages of up to 20,000 face images.
Welcome to General Intelligence, OneZero’s weekly dive into the A.I. news and research that matters.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but apparently a picture of a face is only worth seven cents.
Black-market sellers in China are now offering packages of up to 20,000 face images and personal information data that can be used to impersonate others for as cheap as $0.07 each, or 0.5 yuan, according to a report from China’s state-owned news outlet Xinhua.
And it’s not just still images in these packages. For around $5, sellers will also provide deepfake-like software that animates a still image to bypass some security features on popular dating apps in China like Tantan. These apps require a person to nod or blink in order to verify that the phone isn’t being held up to a still image, according to a report on similar practices in the South China Morning Post.
These images are marketed on Chinese shopping websites like Taobao and Xianyu. When a buyer expresses interest, sellers then move the conversation to messaging apps like WeChat or QQ…
