TL;DR
An artist has created 'digital camouflage' clothing that makes people invisible to AI-powered surveillance cameras, pushing back against their growing presence.
Standing in front of a camera, an AI recognition system puts a green box around you and labels it 'PERSON'. Then artist Simon Weckert hands you a flowery shirt—hold it up and the box and the label vanish. This is his new work, 'digital camouflage,' designed to confuse AI cameras.
Why make this?
More and more city surveillance cameras come with built-in AI that can detect people, vehicles, and even 'anomalous behaviour': someone lying down, loitering, fighting, or an abandoned package can trigger an alert that sends police.
The Berlin police just deployed their first fleet of such cameras at Kottbusser Tor subway station, drawing public backlash. As Weckert puts it, before, a human might have been watching you on a screen—but now the AI itself is analyzing everyone's actions, spotting someone on the ground and maybe flagging a homeless person to the cops.
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