A new range of garish clothes claims to hide you from surveillance cameras. The knitted garments use tech-derived patterns to fool AI into thinking the wearer is an animal.
Italian fashion-tech startup Cap_able describe their Manifesto Collection as a “wearable algorithm to protect our identity”.
It uses a technological system capable of transposing images (called adversarial patches) onto a knitted fabric that can be used to deceive so-called people detectors in real time. Wearing an item in which an adversarial image is woven can protect the biometric data of a person’s face, which either will not be detectable, or will be associated with an incorrect category such as animals, including dogs, zebra, or giraffes.
The garments have been released on sale at ?252 for a T-shirt, with sweaters at ?370 and jogging bottoms available for ?245. Cap_able say the goal of the Manifesto Collection is to raise awareness on the right to privacy and the protection of biometric data, which they believe is an issue often underrepresented despite affecting the majority of citizens around the world.
Cap_able CEO Rachele Didero explains: “Choosing what to wear is the first act of communication we perform, every day. A choice that can be the vehicle of our values.”
In a world where data is the new oil, Cap_able addresses the issue of privacy, opening the discussion on the importance of protecting against the misuse of biometric recognition cameras: a problem that has become increasingly present in our daily life, involving citizens from all over the world and which, if neglected, could freeze the rights of the individual including freedom of expression, association and free movement in public spaces.
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Cap_able claims the fabric has been tested with YOLO, the most common and fastest real-time object detection system.
They report: “People who wear Cap_able’s garments are not recognised as such by the software, which instead identifies dogs, zebras, or giraffes within the fabric.”
Federica Busani, co-founder, adds: “Cap_able aims at changing the way people look at the clothes and accessories they wear by bringing a completely new and deeper attitude to the fashion industry.” Cap_able wants to find new solutions and new fields of application of the technology, to make people reflect on an urgent problem too often underestimated.”
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