Iden
Iden is an independent (fictional) company that started with a focus on public privacy and envisioned a world where people could safely take place in public spaces, safe from data-driven corporations and governmental institutions. Iden searches all footage uploaded to the web for their identifiers and replaces the clients identity with a new anonymous identity. This identity is created with generative models based on a client’s biometric markers.
After the initial deployment phase, Iden decided to implement different levels of service, ranging from basic to fully personalized generative models, the latter being created by altDesigners. Clients have total control over the level of anonymity Iden provides through a digital application. The client can customise their identity, decide whom they want Iden to protect them from and interact with anonymised images of other clients. Additionally, clients could receive bids on anonymised images or videos from other people who want to know their real identity.
Iden has contracts with governments to only share information of a client when a crime is committed. This is why clients of Iden will need to wear a physical identifier, which is a token or a tag that the AI system can scan instead of faces. It is also possible for all users to make bids for revealing fake identities for a price decided by the owner of the tag.
An important part of the research is showing the complexity that results from the proposed core concept of Iden. We expected, based on internal discussions, that the majority of the complexity will be found in societal differences of perspectives on the concept. We decided to use a more qualitative approach which allowed the envisioned demonstrator to be more elaborate and rich in experience. This would allow for a deeper exploration of these perspectives to gather a set of opinions as points of discussion