Highlights:

  • Google LLC developed two open-source solutions aimed to facilitate the processing of user data in compliance with privacy regulations.
  • The first innovation is a tool called Magritte for blurring items in films, such as licence plates. The second is a revamped version of Google’s FHE C Transpiler, a privacy tool that was first launched last year.

Google LLC developed two open-source solutions aimed to facilitate the processing of user data in compliance with privacy regulations.

The first innovation is a tool called Magritte for blurring items in videos, such as licence plates. The second is a revamped version of Google’s FHE C Transpiler, a privacy tool that was first launched last year. It enables apps to process encrypted datasets without first decrypting them.

Magritte is based on an internal software project of the search giant. It automatically detects when an object holding sensitive data, such as a licence plate, appears in a video using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Then, Magritte blurs the object, eliminating the requirement for video editing teams to manually complete the process.

The AI features are enabled in part by Google’s MediaPipe, an open-source tool. The latter technology enables developers to create AI apps that can operate on devices with minimal computing power, such as smartphones.

Miguel Guevara, a product manager at Google’s privacy and data protection office said, “This code is especially useful for video journalists who want to provide increased privacy assurances. By using this open-source code, videographers can save time in blurring objects from a video, while knowing that the underlying ML algorithm can perform detection across a video with high-accuracy.”

Google introduced Magritte with a new version of FHE C Transpiler, an open-source tool that was first launched in last June. The tool facilitates the implementation of fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE, a type of encryption technique. In recent years, researchers have shown considerable interest in the technology since it has the potential to make corporate applications more secure.

To limit the danger of cyberattacks, enterprise apps save sensitive data in encrypted form. However, the data must be decrypted before being utilised. Decrypted files are more vulnerable to assaults because hackers may readily access their contents in the case of a security breach.

The FHE encryption mechanism utilized by Google’s FHE C Transpiler eliminates the requirement to decode data prior to processing. Hence, the strategy enables businesses to reduce the danger caused by cyberattacks.

In reality, however, it is difficult to employ FHE to increase security due to several technological hurdles. One is that running FHE software today demands a prohibitive amount of infrastructure. Another obstacle is that the technology is tough to install for developers.

Google claims that their open-source FHE C Transpiler tool simplifies FHE deployment. The tool is capable of analyzing a piece of code initially designed to decode data and automatically adapting it to execute on FHE-encrypted data. As a result, developers are able to construct apps capable of processing encrypted data with less effort than was previously necessary.

The latest version of FHE C Transpiler introduced by Google recently includes significant speed enhancements. Optimizations were implemented in the circuits used by the tool to process. In computer science, the term ‘circuit’ does not refer to an electronic component, but rather to a specific set of sequential computing processes.

Google’s engineers have halved the size of the data-processing circuits used by FHE Transpiler. According to the search giant, the consequence is a huge performance enhancement. It now requires less infrastructure to operate and can-do computations more quickly.

A substantial amount of infrastructure is required to run FHE software, which is one of the primary reasons why the technology has not yet been extensively embraced by businesses. By decreasing hardware requirements, Google’s FHE tool may facilitate the adoption of FHE by enterprises.