Google Smartphone AI Can Tell if Someone is Looking at Your Phone

A pair of Google researchers will show off a new AI feature at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in California next week. The duo from Google are Hee Jung Ryu and Florian Schroff. The tech they will be showing off is something they call an electronic screen protector and it can tell if someone is looking at your phone over your shoulder.

The tech uses the front-facing camera and eye-detecting AI to tell when more than one person is looking at the screen. The image here is of that tech in action giving the user of the phone a warning message and the eavesdropper a vomit rainbow.

The two researchers claim that the system works in different lighting conditions and different poses and can identify when a person is looking at your screen in 2 milliseconds reports QZ. The software appears to run on the smartphone for processing.

According to the researchers behind the new feature, it could have big implications for privacy in public. The feature could be activated if you are reading sensitive information in public or watching videos in a public place. If it identifies people looking at your smartphone for only a few milliseconds it would seemingly go off literally at a glance.