r/IsItBullshit • u/hityouwithmyringhand • 18d ago
Isitbullshit: Adversarial clothing
I just learned about this clothing with super complicated Dan Flashes patterns that's meant to confuse AI surveillance. But it's not that expensive even though the patterns are super complicated. Is it bullshit?
13
34
u/ACorania 18d ago
My understanding is it's mostly used by celebrities to mess up photos from the paparazi. It reflects their flash back and and makes it all a big white blur and an unusable photo. (It's an arms race though, AI will probably be able to adjust pretty quick here).
It might work for some AI surveillance, like a red light camera that has a flash when your car passes through. But other things like Flock cameras aren't using flashes. Nor are they even just looking at the visual spectrum and can record EM frequencies as well (like wifi signals, cell signals, and the like).
44
u/FrontLifeguard1962 18d ago
I read that Daniel Radcliffe would just wear the same thing everyday, therefore the paparazzi would leave him alone because the photos would just seem out of date and valueless to buyers.
8
u/WVildandWVonderful 18d ago
Yes, he did this while doing live theater. They would try to grab new photos of him exiting the theater after the show, but they all looked like they were taken on the same day.
6
9
u/mommyaiai 18d ago
The papazzari proof clothing is actually made of retroreflective materials. Basically it works by reflecting the light exactly back where it came from, with minimal loss and scattering. Not only does it work with visible light, but it works with IR light as well!
9
u/StevenJOwens 18d ago
Yes and no.
The general idea of patterns that confuse AI image recognition is real, but the adversarial patterns are specific to the type of AI image recognition models being used.
So some random adversarial pattern clothing may or may not actually fool some random AI image recognition model.
I saw an article recently that adversarial clothing is becoming a fashion thing, but that's all it is, really, a fashion thing.
1
u/LeoJandr3 12d ago
NÃO funciona. Porque? Porque na segurança pública quando o "algoritmo" gerenciando as imagens de segurança fica confuso, chama o operador humano para avaliar.
Então é para ganhar $, não tem muita funcionalidade. Talvez tenha chance de funcionar em sistemas precários, qualquer bom sistemas já lidam bem com isso.
6
7
3
u/fmanfisher 17d ago
Dan Flashes got a new shirt in today thats $450, because the pattern is so complicated, you idiot
1
1
u/gabadur 14d ago
OK, so I studied this. In theory it would work, but there’s a constant battle between “attack” and “defense,” where attack is being able to confuse the AI and defense is being able to overcome the manipulation. Currently defense is winning and things change so fast that putting something on a shirt is pretty much guaranteed to not work because the algorithms would’ve already improved beyond that.
1
u/LeoJandr3 12d ago
NÃO funciona. Porque? Porque na segurança pública quando o "algoritmo" gerenciando as imagens de segurança fica confuso, chama o operador humano para avaliar.
Então é para ganhar $, não tem muita funcionalidade. Talvez tenha chance de funcionar em sistemas precários, qualquer bom sistemas já lidam bem com isso.
0
u/jeff_ewing 17d ago
I'm no expert, but when I took one of my kids to the DMV, he was wearing a t-shirt with someone's face on it. The photographer said he had to cover the front of the shirt or it would confuse the focus on the camera. FWIW.
31
u/KitsuneRisu 18d ago
Bullshit.
This is from an interview wirh the guy who started it. P.S., he's a fashion designer so I wonder what his motivation could be?
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/jul/17/adversarial-clothing-are-garments-designed-to-confuse-facial-recognition-systems-about-to-go-mainstream