Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy experts

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/19/ [login to see] /artificial-intelligence-can-find-your-location-in-photos-worrying-privacy-expert
A student project has revealed yet another power of artificial intelligence — it can be extremely good at geolocating where photos are taken.

The project, known as Predicting Image Geolocations (or PIGEON, for short) was designed by three Stanford graduate students in order to identify locations on Google Street View.

But when presented with a few personal photos it had never seen before, the program was, in the majority of cases, able to make accurate guesses about where the photos were taken.

Like so many applications of AI, this new power is likely to be a double-edged sword: It may help people identify the locations of old snapshots from relatives, or allow field biologists to conduct rapid surveys of entire regions for invasive plant species, to name but a few of many likely beneficial applications.