Why uploading a photo without revealing where it was taken is more dangerous today with artificial intelligence
Any information you upload online, any file you host on a server, or any message you send could fall into the wrong hands. On paper, the services and platforms we use should be trustworthy, employ strong encryption, and ultimately be secure. However, there is no absolute protection, and there will always be risks. Now, when we consider artificial intelligence, this risk increases. Therefore, uploading a photo to the internet without wanting others to know where it was taken poses an even greater risk.
Artificial intelligence can be used for this purpose. Anyone can use it to create more sophisticated attacks, more advanced hacking tools, and facilitate access to specific data about someone. This also includes the ability to geolocate images we have taken.
Think of a photo you took somewhere and decided to post online or on social media, but you didn't mention where it was taken. Maybe they didn't want you to know about the location, or that you visited a particular site, or something else entirely. So far, unless the location was very obvious, you could have done that.
What changes with artificial intelligence? Just as you can create a query and perform multiple searches to find a solution to a problem, you can do the same to quickly determine the location where a photo was taken, as well as display satellite maps, Street View images, etc.
Using this technology, anyone can take a photo you've uploaded to Facebook or Instagram, for example, and run it through artificial intelligence to determine the location where the photo was taken. I can know the exact location, such as a specific city, a park I was in, or any other place.
Using this information, they may also be able to learn more about you. They'll know you've visited a certain place, that you might live in that area, and so on. This is useful for hackers, as they can launch more targeted attacks aimed at stealing your passwords and other personal data.
In short, it has become increasingly difficult to upload a photo to the internet or social media and prevent others from seeing where it was taken. Thanks to artificial intelligence tools that allow us to access this information, keeping this "secret" is no longer so easy. Moreover, even more advanced AI tools will emerge over time.