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Photo Scrubber uses local face detection to blur faces and remove metadata

simonwillison.net Editor score 6/10

The experimental tool uses MediaPipe compiled to WebAssembly and the BlazeFace model to detect and blur faces in photos; it also removes metadata. Local processing offers a practical privacy-oriented pattern for image tools.

What

Photo Scrubber is an experimental tool that detects faces in photos, blurs them, and removes metadata.

How

It uses Google’s MediaPipe C++ library compiled to WebAssembly via @mediapipe/tasks-vision, plus the BlazeFace face detection model.

Why it matters

Local face blurring and metadata removal can add privacy handling to photo-sharing workflows.

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