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EnglishWhy Was the Are You You? Game Created?
Updated
Are You You? (areyouyou.eu) was created as an educational project to show, in a playful way, how difficult it can be to escape face recognition technology. It was developed by artist and privacy designer Tijmen Schep as part of the Sherpa project, an EU-funded research consortium exploring how AI systems could better protect human rights.
The Purpose Behind the Game
The site states its goal directly: to demonstrate how hard it is to fool face recognition, but to do so light-heartedly. Rather than lecturing visitors about surveillance and AI, the game turns the problem into a personal challenge — can you stop the algorithm from recognizing you?
That framing matters. A visitor who tries to beat the system and fails (or barely succeeds) experiences the limits of evading face recognition firsthand, which is a more memorable lesson than a written explanation.
What the Gameplay Demonstrates
The mechanic is simple: the goal is to fool the "AI" into not recognizing you anymore. To win, you make funny faces until the match meter drops below 50%. The site suggests tactics such as:
- Moving your head from side to side, up and down
- Sticking out your tongue
- Laughing
- Removing glasses
- Using your hands to deform your face
Each attempt produces a score across levels, and the game shows "face prints" — described on the site as like a fingerprint for faces — alongside your photos, highlighting which shots looked least like you. The takeaway is built into the design: even deliberate, exaggerated distortion often isn't enough to fully escape the algorithm.
Who Made It and Why
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Creator | Artist and privacy designer Tijmen Schep |
| Context | Part of the Sherpa project, an EU-funded research consortium |
| Focus | How AI systems could better protect human rights |
| Approach | Light-hearted, game-based education rather than a technical explainer |
| Support | Created with support from the European Union |
The project sits within a broader conversation about facial recognition and civil liberties — the site also points visitors toward the #ReclaimYourFace campaign for those who want to go further.
Privacy by Design
The educational message is reinforced by how the game itself is built. According to the site, the face recognition algorithm runs completely locally in your own browser, and no pictures of your face are uploaded anywhere. It states that no personal data is collected, there are no cookies and no tracking, and the only thing stored is the final score, which acts as a viewer count. Camera access is required to play, but the processing stays on your device.
That design choice is consistent with the project's purpose: it asks you to trust a face recognition demo while demonstrating that such tools can be built without harvesting your data.
Who It's For
The game suits anyone curious about facial recognition who wants a quick, hands-on introduction rather than a technical paper — students, privacy-conscious visitors, or people encountering the #ReclaimYourFace discussion for the first time. If you want a structured explanation of how the game works step by step, see our guide to playing Are You You?; if your concern is data handling, see whether Are You You? collects or uploads your face data.