Locating any person or house from a single image has become much easier thanks to artificial intelligence technologies , raising pivotal questions about the privacy and security of users in their homes and inside rented and hotel rooms. So how does this technology work? And what are its limitations?
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Talk of this technology began after the spread of the "Raven" app, which uses artificial intelligence to locate people, according to a report published by the "Daily Galaxy" website. The app can easily pinpoint the location of any person from a single image of their interior space, whether it's a rental property, a hotel room, or something else. As long as an image showing the room's interior layout exists, the app can access it.
The application relies primarily on the photo library available across various real estate websites, whether they are rental sites, short-term rental sites like Airbnb, or even hotels and others.
Instead of searching for a matching image and trying to trace the image's origin as was done previously, Raven can easily compare the contents of rooms, the interior design, and various details to accurately determine where it was taken.
The Raven app was developed by Graylark Technologies, whose CEO, Daniel Heinen, had previously announced that the Los Angeles Police Department and the Miami-Dade County Sheriff's Office had purchased direct access to the app.
This means that the use of such applications by police officers is no longer a possibility or something that could happen, but a reality in two of the largest police departments in the United States .
A feature that wasn't in the plan
The Daily Galaxy report explained that the ability to identify properties and rooms from photos wasn't a core feature around which the app was developed; rather, it was a serendipitous discovery. The app's primary goal was to use photos taken inside homes that showed streets and external details to accurately determine the location and angle of the image. Therefore, it was initially named "GeoSPy."
The website adds that while Heinen was testing the application and using a picture of himself looking in the bathroom mirror, he thought the application would fail to recognize the location of the picture, but the opposite happened, as the application was able to recognize it and place a pin to indicate its location on a map of San Francisco , which prompted Heinen to conduct more experiments on this feature.
The Miami Police Department, which arrested Tate, was also among the clients of the “Raven” application, according to a previous report by the American investigative website “404 Media”, although the Miami Police Department did not disclose the specific techniques it used to arrest Tate.
Grelark's collaboration with police agencies extends beyond simply purchasing a license to use the app. The company restricted access to its app, which had been available to everyone, following the release of a 404 Media report that revealed the deal between police departments and the company in February of this year.
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