LONDON — If privacy is more important to you than your fashion sense, this post (and clothing line) is for you. A new range of garish clothes claims to “hide” you from surveillance cameras. The knitted garments use tech-derived patterns to fool A.I. into thinking the wearer is an animal.
Italian fashion-tech startup Cap_able describes their Manifesto Collection as a “wearable algorithm to protect our identity.” It uses a technological system capable of transposing images (called adversarial patches) onto a knitted fabric that can be used to deceive so-called “people detectors” in real time.
Wearing an item in which an adversarial image is woven can protect the biometric data of a person’s face. The outcome is that either the individual will not be detectable, or will be associated with an incorrect category such as animals including dogs, zebras, or giraffes.
The garments have been released on sale at $311 for a T-shirt, with sweaters at $456 and jogging bottoms available for $302.
Cap_able says the goal of the Manifesto Collection is to raise awareness on the right to privacy and the protection of biometric data, which they believe an issue often underrepresented despite affecting the majority of citizens around the world.
“Choosing what to wear is the first act of communication we perform, every day. A choice that can be the vehicle of our values,” says Cap_able CEO Rachele Didero in a statement. “In a world where data is the new oil, Cap_able addresses the issue of privacy, opening the discussion on the importance of protecting against the misuse of biometric recognition cameras: a problem that has become increasingly present in our daily life, involving citizens from all over the world and which, if neglected, could freeze the rights of