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.
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.”
