[Convenient New Feature: ARCHIVE of All Articles]
RISKY ARTIFICIAL REALITY
One missing persons case in Mexico recently sparked a heated debate about the excessive use of filters and image-editing tools online.
Efforts to find a 30-year-old woman who went missing in the Mexican state of Chiapas earlier this month were hampered by the fact that the photos used by police on their posters looked nothing like her.
Grecia Mendoza was first reported missing in southeastern Mexico in mid-April by her worried sister.
A witness said she saw an armed person grab Grecia.
Authorities were concerned that her disappearance could be connected to an gang attack in the same area which had left four dead in a bar.
Following the report from the young woman’s sister, police activated the Alba Protocol, a procedure that starts a missing-person search.
As part of the search, police used some of Grecia’s social media photos to create missing-person posters that they then distributed both online and within the local community.
There was just one huge problem – according to people who knew the 30-year-old woman: the person in the photos looked nothing like her!
In dangerous situations, when time is of the essence and every hour that passes makes finding the victim alive less likely, missing-persons posters play an important role, but in this particular case, they only made it more difficult for strangers to recognize the missing woman.
“How were they going to find her with photos full of filters?” was one online comment.
Luckily, Grecia Mendoza was found alive several days later on a highway near her home, although she still remains in police custody.
The circumstances surrounding her disappearance and her eventual return remain confused and confidential, and the case is still being investigated.
But, it has started some serious debate about the use of social images for missing- persons publicity. Although online media are an easy source of important visual material, experts say that the frequent use of AR filters hinders police instead of helping them.
“The National Search Commission for Missing Persons discovered some time ago that ID posters for the Alba Protocol frequently fail to locate missing persons because they are generated using photos from social media, where users employ fantasy filters and even AI software,” Security Consultant David Saucedo says.
So, the case of Grecia Mendoza may have ended happily, but it does highlight one risky, real-world consequence of those fantasy AR games that so many innocent people like to play online these days.
SOURCE: odditycentral.com
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