The trend of covering kids’ faces with emojis is popular among many parents and even celebrities when posting pictures to social media. For instance, actors and podcast hosts Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell have become somewhat famous for never showing their kids’ faces on social media.
However, thanks to advancements in AI (artificial intelligence) technology, simply covering your child’s face with an emoji may not be enough to protect them anymore.
While AI may not be able to predict what your child looks like, safety experts warn that if you’re consistently posting pictures of your children — even with their faces covered up with emojis — AI is able to accurately analyze photos to gather crucial information about your child.
AI is, quite literally, designed to detect patterns to gather information, so it can look at all the photos you have ever posted of your child and add the information in those photos to a database of knowledge readily available on you, like your work place, address, travel logs, and even favorite restaurants and places to visit, to come up with key points about your child.
In lieu of a face, another outlet even warned that AI can swap out an emoji covering your child’s face with another face, leaving the altered photo to be used for other potentially harmful purposes, like editing into a photo for blackmail or sharing with predators.
Some people, celebs included, elect to cover kids' faces with emojis if they post pictures of them on social media.
The information is not meant to strike total fear into your hearts (as scary as it might sound), but simply to help you think twice about what you post online of your kids or family.
And unfortunately, cybersecurity experts warn that videos of your kids, especially if the videos contain their voices, may be even more ripe for risk.
Cybersecurity strategy manager Bharti Lim told Tyla.com that parents should avoid uploading any videos of their child speaking, as ‘generative AI is amazing at what it can produce, but it can also be used for the wrong things’.
Basically, anything you upload to social media is free data for AI and potential scammers and hackers to use.
Lisa Ventura, the founder of Cyber Security Unity, told The Independent that, unfortunately, even well-meaning parents who are putting emojis over a child’s face in a bid to protect their privacy really are not accomplishing that goal.
“I need to be brutally honest here,” she explained. “Putting an emoji over a child’s face provides virtually no real privacy protection whatsoever.”
Photos with children facing away from the camera are popular with some parents and celebrities, but AI can use any photo to analyze patterns for sensitive information.
The information about AI’s potential reach on children’s privacy seems to have taken hold, as some celebrities known for putting emojis on their children’s faces on their socials, like Meghan Markle, have already deleted any emoji-laden photos from their accounts. In their place, there are limited pictures of the kids, or just images of the kids facing away from the camera or with their faces hidden.
As AI continues to advance, security experts warn that parents should be aware of the potential dangers that AI + kids’ photos can pose, so parents can best decide what they will do with their children’s content.
Some influencers and parents also also electing not to post their children at all, out of fears of how those images and content could be used.
TikTokers are sharing why they are electing not to post their kids on social, ever.
” You will never catch a profile photo of my baby’s face anywhere,” said TikToker @mrschristmas444. “Do you have any idea what type of people are on the internet? Do you?”
“100% agree,” added a commenter in the video. “There is no need.”
