Disturbing Website Can Find Every Online Photo of You

We all have them. Most of us do our best to keep them hidden but there are times when they escape our better judgement and see the light of day. "Them" is an embarrassing photograph. Yes, we all have them. And you might be surprised to learn just how many of them there are of you online.

There is a website that uses artificial intelligence to take a picture that you provide and then scour the internet for pictures of you based on your physical attributes. The problem with some of those pictures is that you might not even be aware that they have been posted online.

Maybe you posted a selfie after a night on the town or even worse, perhaps someone in your social circle posted a photo of you after a night on the town. Those aren't the kinds of images any of us want made available to the wandering eyes of the general public.

If they're in our own personal collection that's different but that picture of you on the sawhorse at Texas Roadhouse wearing the giant sombrero while drinking a fish bowl margarita might be the image you just don't want the rest of the world to see.

How Can You Find All the Pictures of You That Have Been Posted Online?

There is a web search site that specializes in finding not only embarrassing images of you but actually, any image of you. It's called PimEyes and for some pretty scary reasons it's been called "the most disturbing AI website on the internet".

Here is how the website works.

Even if you only watched a few minutes of that video you get the idea of just how far-reaching (into your personal business) this website can be. From what we understand PimEyes has a free version and it also has a Premium version which allows you easier access to the websites that might still be hosting photos of you.

What Do I Do If I Find an Image of Me Online I Did Not Authorize?

That is actually covered by PimEyes for their users. Basically, it instructs you how to request an image be removed from a site. It also has information on your rights concerning your images online. However, in most cases, if you just contact the website administrator and ask nicely, they'll remove an image for you.

But if they don't you still have legal avenues you can go down with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These two  "friends" can be really quite helpful when it comes to adding leverage to your request, if you know what I mean.

How Well Does PimEyes Actually Work?

One site we visited, LADBible.com, had their writers use the PimEyes service. Those writers reported some interesting finds but perhaps the most telling comment came from a participant who suggested the PimEyes is actually better at finding doppelgangers of you than it is actually finding images of you.

That makes sense because the AI program is basing its findings on your physical features so it's only natural that people with similar physical attributes would be included in the search results. And it might be fun to find out you have a twin who you're not actually related to at all. Then again, it could get really creepy too.