The first advertisement hidden by the law! “Little islands of warm and sunny Italy” promises the delicatessen Don Julio in Moscow, offering authentic Italian products such as prosciutto, ricotta, mozzarella and tiramisu in freezing Russia.
But in Russia, as is known, imports of products from European countries and from America have been banned.
Obviously, Don Julio can find a way to import them, but the difficulty lies in advertising the imported products!
So what did the ingenious owner of the delicatessen do? He paid an advertising company to equip its signs with a facial recognition system that has been hacked to recognize the insignia of Russian police uniforms instead of faces!
According to Adweek, the advertising company “The 23”, produced outdoor advertisements that can identify police officers. So when a police officer approaches these ads, as you can see in the video, the one of a large piece of "forbidden" cheese, changes, and displays a completely innocent advertisement for a baboushka shop.
[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02S06dG2clU”]
Advertising idea hidden from the law is a clever trick, although not entirely effective , as the police, as you will see, had time to identify what was hidden behind the advertising with the babushkas. However, the interest here is not the effectiveness, but the of advertising signs that can detect and recognize faces. As Gizmodo reports , imagine standing at a bus stop, the advertisement detects the brand badge you are wearing and shows you the appropriate ads, or recognizes the model and brand of your car as well as your daily routes and displays ads with potential vacation destinations? Very clever? Beyond the strange factor of being photographed without your knowledge and permission, there is also the risk that this facial recognition function will spread more and more to the Internet of Things (IoT). With the advent of IoT , the prospect of danger lurks, not only from hackers spying on all our data everywhere, but also from the risk of attackers seizing data channels and controlling the devices themselves. Beyond these risks, let's take into account that this data will be much more sensitive as it will contain personal information from when we return home, the hours we sleep, and details such as how we prefer our morning coffee, for example. Facial recognition has infiltrated advertising on the streets of Russia, can we be sure that advertisers will not try to exploit the benefits of such advertising?
