YouTube Offers ‘Face-Blurring’ Option

YouTube has launched a ‘face-blurring’ tool, that lets its users automatically obscure all faces in the videos they upload, at a click of a button.

This feature aims to protect identities and privacy of those captured on video—who need to remain anonymous, or if they are minors.

“Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube,” the video-sharing site’s blog wrote.

“Because human rights footage, in particular, opens up new risks to the people posting videos and to those filmed, it’s important to keep in mind other ways to protect yourself and the people in your videos.”

To access the feature, all users have to do is to choose the video they’d like to edit in their Video Enhancements tool, go to ‘Additional Features’, and click the ‘Apply’ button below ‘Blur All Faces’.

Users would be able to view a preview of what the video would look like with blurred faces.

A new copy of the video would be created with blur faces when users choose to save changes.

The original video (without blurred faces) can be deleted.

According to YouTube, the technology may have difficulty detecting faces “depending on the angle, lighting, obstructions and video quality”, and it is “possible that certain faces or frames will not be blurred”.

The function also blurs all faces in the video, and does not allow users to individually select faces they wish to blur.

[via YouTube Blog]