Privacy of machine learning models is one of the remaining challenges that hinder the broad adoption of Artificial Intelligent (AI). This paper considers this problem in the context of image datasets containing faces. Anonymization of such datasets is becoming increasingly important due to their central role in the training of autonomous cars, for example, and the vast amount of data generated by surveillance systems. While most prior work de-identifies facial images by modifying identity features in pixel space, we instead project the image onto the latent space of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model, find the features that provide the biggest identity disentanglement, and then manipulate these features in latent space, pixel space, or both. The main contribution of the paper is the design of a feature-preserving anonymization framework, StyleID, which protects the individuals’ identity, while preserving as many characteristics of the original faces in the image dataset as possible. As part of the contribution, we present a novel disentanglement metric, three complementing disentanglement methods, and new insights into identity disentanglement. StyleID provides tunable privacy, has low computational complexity, and is shown to outperform current state-of-the-art solutions.

Most state-of-the-art facial recognition systems (FRS:s) use face embeddings. In this paper, we present the IdDecoder framework, capable of effectively synthesizing realistic-neutralized face images from face embeddings, and two effective attacks on state-of-the-art facial recognition models using embeddings. The first attack is a black-box version of a model inversion attack that allows the attacker to reconstruct a realistic face image that is both visually and numerically (as determined by the FRS:s) recognized as the same identity as the original face used to create a given face embedding. This attack raises significant privacy concerns regarding the membership of the gallery dataset of these systems and highlights the importance of both the people designing and deploying FRS:s paying greater attention to the protection of the face embeddings than currently done. The second attack is a novel attack that performs the model inversion, so to instead create the face of an alternative identity that is visually different from the original identity but has close identity distance (ensuring that it is recognized as being of the same identity). This attack increases the attacked system's false acceptance rate and raises significant security concerns. Finally, we use IdDecoder to visualize, evaluate, and provide insights into differences between three state-of-the-art facial embedding models.

In this era of ubiquitous surveillance and online presence, protecting facial privacy has become a critical concern for individuals and society as a whole. Adversarial attacks have emerged as a promising solution to this problem, but current methods are limited in quality or are impractical for sensitive domains such as facial editing. This paper presents a novel adversarial image editing framework called StyleAdv, which leverages StyleGAN's latent spaces to generate powerful adversarial images, providing an effective tool against facial recognition systems. StyleAdv achieves high success rates by employing meaningful facial editing with StyleGAN while maintaining image quality, addressing a challenge faced by existing methods. To do so, the comprehensive framework integrates semantic editing, adversarial attacks, and face recognition systems, providing a cohesive and robust tool for privacy protection. We also introduce the ``residual attack`` strategy, using residual information to enhance attack success rates. Our evaluation offers insights into effective editing, discussing tradeoffs in latent spaces, optimal edits for our optimizer, and the impact of utilizing residual information. Our approach is transferable to state-of-the-art facial recognition systems, making it a versatile tool for privacy protection. In addition, we provide a user-friendly interface with multiple editing options to help users create effective adversarial images. Extensive experiments are used to provide insights and demonstrate that StyleAdv outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both attack success rate and image quality. By providing a versatile tool for generating high-quality adversarial samples, StyleAdv can be used both to enhance individual users' privacy and to stimulate advances in adversarial attack and defense research.