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| Sorry Bill, I think that's Marilyn Manson you're next to? |
Oh go then, if we must, but go and get a bowl of popcorn and settle down!
The Pictorial Key Pad in summary, to save a walk to the Digital Commons:
What I was intrigued by ~ and turns out Y Combinator were too until they found out who was behind it ~ was the notion that the one thing we're exceptional at from the course of our evolution was recognising faces. So idea was, slip a few you recognise into an array of those you don't, and you've something easier to remember than the components of a PIN code... but which cannot really be relayed in ways that would assist a hacker.
For instance, who'd I most associate with up there? Yes! Paris Hilton, because she shares a surname, and because I'd like to see her with no clothes on! You however have only a 1-in-50 chance of guessing the same way (Ed. unless you're male, so maybe granny would be a better random pick after all...).
The problem that rapidly became apparent was that you'd need a database of looks like faces generated most easily by AI to avoid copyright and GDPR (GPDR?) issues, and that was looking (a) tricky and (b) expensive.
All that changed when I realised ~ too late as it happened ~ that now it'd be easier simply to buy the software generating the faces, with things moving fast and getting so cheap. Another issue though was the fact the passcode you see on a phone from the get-go is proprietary and difficult to break into in more ways than one. Thefts of mobiles though remains massive; this an intriguing step in a more secure direction.
Thus what would happen would be that you'd swipe the phone and in just an inst it would produce an array of AI-generated mugshots, among which would be people only you would be expected to know. In the pitch to YC I used their own faces in a sad effort to appeal to their vanity... which clearly worked*.
For the fact is any number of ideas briefly flourish and die before their time, and when I did the due diligence the idea of recognising shapes say or icons or emojis that you'd pre-selected for example dated as far back as 2003. Not faces as I recall though, perhaps because it was prior to the explosion of images we're used to now.
But nothing as Victor Hugo observed can stop an idea whose idea has come, except perhaps VCs in San Fransisco whom you've just pissed off in a blog-post?
(Incidentally every pic up there is in fact a famous mug-shot due arrest or detention except for Ronald McDonald, who I'm currently being sued over... spot him kids?).
* Ed. He's a rare form of Tourettes affecting only typing, but I won't be contacting Paris for him.
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| The overlay... took me ages. |
