Inspiration
According to a research conducted across 3 countries, at least 600 million people suffer from online image abuse, and one-third of them have considered suicide. Online image abuse kills people and it’s difficult to tackle. When it comes to getting consent, there is a disconnection between people and platforms. Companies like Facebook spent billions of dollars on content policy, but are still unable to determine whether an image is being shared consensually or not. When these platforms fail to act on abusive content, federal fines, and class action lawsuits happen. For victims, due to the disconnection from platforms and lack of access to proper tools, justice is rarely served.
In today’s online environment, everything is becoming more public, accessible, and transparent; inevitably, our privacy is jeopardized. Catfishing, identity theft, and cyberbullying are becoming more commonplace while technology and social media companies are not equipped to deal with the repercussions they might face, such as lawsuits and damage to their brands (Meta was fined $5 billion by the fed for privacy violations). I saw this directly in my previous role on the compliance team at Eventbrite, where the biggest issue we saw was IP related. As a platform, we weren’t able to determine if something is infringing or consensual unless we communicate directly with the owner of those pictures. The inability to track and determine consent is an issue we face across the industry, which is why online image abuse is so difficult to tackle.
What it does
Alecto AI is a facial recognition tool that identifies online image abuse (deep fake, fake profile, revenge porn, identity theft, IP infringement etc.). People can use Alecto AI to search the web for instances where their photos or videos are posted. This allows our customers to see if and where their likeness shows up on social media accounts, online dating profiles, or even pornographic/explicit content. Alecto AI serves as the broken link between individuals and content hosting platforms.
By allowing individuals to confirm ownership or consent of their accounts or materials, we are empowering them to retake control of their image online. For instances of online image abuse, we work with the tech companies (such as Meta, Twitter, Tinder) to act as a consent-based content moderation tool to ensure that our customers have a clear and easy path to remove unwanted uses of their images.
How we built it
the mobile app is mostly written with react native
Challenges we ran into
scrape massive data from the open-source website
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are the only facial recognition tool on the market that does not compromise between accessibility and security. We have a verification process that makes sure that an individual’s search results are only visible to that person’s eyes to prevent our tool from being abused by stalkers.
What we learned
The common misconception is that online image abuse impacts mostly women. The truth is, men are also being impacted by this issue, especially when it comes to extortion and identity theft. Privacy and security is an important issue for everyone.
What's next for Alecto AI
- User Acquisition
- Work with social media companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter; online dating companies such as Tinder, Hinge, OK Cupid etc. to add consent & identity features for end users
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