A font called 'Decoy Font' has appeared that is readable to humans but appears as different characters to AI.
Mixfont, a font development service, has released 'Decoy Font,' a font that allows humans to read the original text while making it appear as a different text to image recognition AI. It is distributed in the common TTF format and can be installed on a computer and used like a regular font.
Decoy Font: A TTF font that hides what you type
AI's character recognition capabilities have improved dramatically, enabling it to read dates and times from event images and extract text from document screenshots. However, this also raises concerns that AI could potentially extract text intended only for humans or content that shouldn't be collected without permission, leading to increased interest in methods to protect information from automated collection by AI.
Decoy Font displays different text to humans and AI by overlaying 'human-readable characters' and 'decoy characters for AI' onto a single character shape. When viewed up close, the decoy characters, drawn with thin outlines, become more noticeable.
The system works by allowing you to read the original text placed in the background when you move away from the screen or squint.
Image recognition AI tends to prioritize characters with clear outlines, making it easier for them to read decoy text than the actual text. When Mixfont had its AI analyze images using Decoy Font, ChatGPT and Gemini returned decoy text instead of the actual text.
Decoy Font can be applied to entire text, and on the Mixfont website, you can combine the text you want to hide with a decoy text and save it as an image. It is based on the open-source font DejaVu Sans Mono and is free for personal, commercial, and client-facing use.
It should be noted that Decoy Font is not a mechanism that can completely hide the content, and AI with advanced functions such as code execution, or AI instructed to find hidden characters, may be able to read the original text. Mixfont has suggested that Decoy Font be used not only for CAPTCHA and messaging between friends, but also as a standard for measuring the character recognition capabilities of AI.
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