------------

status: published
title: About MegaPixels
desc: About MegaPixels
slug: about
cssclass: about
published: 2018-12-04
updated: 2018-12-04
authors: Adam Harvey

------------

# About MegaPixels

<section class="about-menu">
<ul>
<li><a class="current" href="/about/">About</a></li>
<li><a href="/about/news/">News</a></li>
<li><a href="/about/attribution/">Attribution</a></li>
<li><a href="/about/legal/">Legal / Privacy</a></li>
</ul>
</section>

MegaPixels is an independent art and research project by [Adam Harvey](https://ahprojects.com) and [Jules LaPlace](https://asdf.us) that investigates the ethics, origins, and individual privacy implications of face recognition image datasets and their role in the expansion of biometric surveillance technologies.

MegaPixels is made possible with support from <a href="http://mozilla.org">Mozilla</a>

MegaPixels is an art and research project first launched in 2017 for an [installation](https://ahprojects.com/megapixels-glassroom/) at Tactical Technology Collective's [GlassRoom](https://tacticaltech.org/pages/glass-room-london-press/) about face recognition datasets. In 2018 MegaPixels was extended to cover pedestrian analysis datasets for a [commission by Elevate Arts festival](https://esc.mur.at/de/node/2370) in Austria. Since then MegaPixels has evolved into a large-scale interrogation of hundreds of publicly-available face and person analysis datasets, the first of which launched on this site in April 2019.

MegaPixels aims to provide a critical perspective on machine learning image datasets, one that might otherwise escape academia and industry funded artificial intelligence think tanks that are often supported by the same technology companies who created many of the datasets presented on this site.

MegaPixels is an independent project, designed as a public resource for educators, students, journalists, and researchers. Each dataset presented on this site undergoes a thorough review of its images, intent, and citations. MegaPixels is a website-first research project, with an academic publication to follow in fall 2019.

A dataset of verified geocoded citations and dataset statistics will be published in Fall 2019 along with a research paper as part of a research fellowship for [KIM (Critical Artificial Intelligence) Karlsruhe HfG](http://kim.hfg-karlsruhe.de/).


#### Team

- [Adam Harvey](https://ahprojects.com): Concept, research and analysis, design, computer vision
- [Jules LaPlace](https://asdf.us): Information and systems architecture, data management, citation geocoding, web applications


### News and Publications

- July 2019: New York Times writes about MegaPixels and how "[Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/technology/databases-faces-facial-recognition-technology.html)" 
- June 2019 - 2020: MegaPixels installation at Ars Electronica Center (AT) exhibition ["Compass - Navigating the Future"](https://ars.electronica.art/center/en/megapixels) 
- June 28, 2019: Munich Security Conference launches [Transational Security Report](https://tsr.securityconference.de/) including custom analysis from the MegaPixels project on illicit data flows
- June 26, 2019: The Atlantic writes about image training datasets "in the wild" and research ethics: [Universities Record Students on Campuses for Research](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/universities-record-students-campuses-research/592537/) by Sidney Fussell

Read more [news](/about/news)


#### Contributing Researchers

- Beth (aka Ms. Celeb)
- Berit Gilma
- Mathana Stender

#### Code and Libraries

- [Semantic Scholar](https://semanticscholar.org) for citation aggregation
- Leaflet.js for maps
- C3.js for charts
- ThreeJS for 3D visualizations
- PDFMiner.Six and Pandas for research paper analysis


#### Attribution

If you use MegaPixels or any data derived from it for your work, please cite our original work as follows:

<pre>
@online{megapixels,
  author = {Harvey, Adam. LaPlace, Jules.},
  title = {MegaPixels: Origins, Ethics, and Privacy Implications of Publicly Available Face Recognition Image Datasets},
  year = 2019,
  url = {https://megapixels.cc/},
  urldate = {2019-04-18}
}
</pre>