Photo Scrubber — local face blur & metadata removal

Simon Willison released Photo Scrubber, a browser-based tool that automatically detects and blurs faces in photographs and strips metadata, built with GPT-6 Astra. The tool runs locally using Google's MediaPipe C++ library compiled to WebAssembly via @mediapipe/tasks-vision and the BlazeFace face detection model. Willison said he built it after photographing protesters and deciding he did not want to share images of strangers with identifiable faces.

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