# Photo Scrubber — local face blur & metadata removal

> Source: <https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/29/photo-scrubber/>
> Published: 2026-09-29 16:45:27+00:00

**Tool:** [Photo Scrubber — local face blur & metadata removal](https://tools.simonwillison.net/photo-scrubber)

I took a photograph of some protesters, then thought about how I don't like sharing photographs of strangers with identifiable faces. I [had GPT-6 Astra build](https://github.com/simonw/tools/commit/aa733ecc3458d5703e3b40c84507ae362f5fb294) this experimental tool that would identify faces and automatically blur them out.

It uses Google's [MediaPipe](https://developers.google.com/edge/mediapipe/solutions/guide) C++ library, compiled to WebAssembly via [@mediapipe/tasks-vision](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@mediapipe/tasks-vision), plus the [BlazeFace](https://sites.google.com/view/perception-cv4arvr/blazeface) face detection model.

Tags: [photography](https://simonwillison.net/tags/photography), [tools](https://simonwillison.net/tags/tools)