areyouyou.eu

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

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.

To play Are You You? (areyouyou.eu), allow camera access, look at the camera for the five-second photo countdown, then make faces until the recognition meter drops below 50%. That threshold is the win condition. The site says the face recognition model runs locally in your browser, no photos are uploaded, and no cookies or tracking are used; only the final score is stored as a viewer count.

Before You Start

• Camera access is required. The page states that access to your camera is necessary to play. If you block it, the game cannot take the photo it needs.
• The model loads first. You will see a "Loading face recognition model..." message before play begins.
• Nothing is uploaded. According to the site, the algorithm runs entirely in your own browser and no pictures of your face are sent anywhere.

Step by Step

1. Open areyouyou.eu and choose Play.
2. Grant camera permission when the browser asks. If you decline, you will see an "Unable to access camera" message.
3. Wait for the model to load, then look at the camera. Your photo is taken after a 5-second countdown.
4. Make funny faces to push the match meter down. The meter shows a percentage match ("% match") and a "Not you??" reading as it falls.
5. Keep going until the meter drops below 50%. That is when you win and see "YOU DID IT!"

Tactics the Site Suggests

The game's own instructions list these approaches:

• Move your head from side to side, up and down
• Stick out your tongue
• Laugh
• Remove glasses
• Use your hands to deform your face

The underlying idea is simple: face recognition compares a "face print" (the site compares it to a fingerprint for faces) against your earlier photo. Anything that changes the geometry or visibility of your features gives the algorithm less to match.

What You See and How Scoring Works

• Face prints: next to the faces, the game displays face prints so you can see what the algorithm is comparing.
• Levels: the score screen shows Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 results, each rated from "Bad" to "Fail," plus a "Beat the system bonus."
• Final score: at the end you get a total and a label such as "A facial gymnast," along with an average "% you" figure and how often the algorithm concluded it was likely the same person.
• Extras: you can download a picture of your result, try again, or use the sharing buttons. The site says these are privacy-friendly and contain no third-party tracking.

Common Snags

• Camera blocked: re-enable camera permission for the site in your browser settings, then reload.
• Meter stuck above 50%: combine tactics rather than repeating one. Moving your head changes pose, while hands or tongue change visible features; using both is more likely to push the match down.
• Glasses: if you wear them, the site explicitly suggests removing them as one option.

What the Project Is For

Are You You? is an educational project by artist and privacy designer Tijmen Schep, made as part of the Sherpa project, an EU-funded research consortium exploring how AI systems could better protect human rights. The stated goal is to show, light-heartedly, how difficult it can be to escape face recognition technology.

Are You You? (areyouyou.eu) is a browser-based game that shows how a face recognition algorithm turns your face into a match score — and how hard it is to push that score down. You win by making faces until the match meter drops below 50%. The takeaway: disguising your face can lower an algorithm's confidence, but the game is built to demonstrate how difficult it is to fully escape face recognition, not to prove you can.

What the game actually measures

The game runs a face recognition model locally in your browser. It compares your live camera image against a reference photo and outputs a percentage match — how likely the algorithm thinks the two images show the same person.

That percentage is the whole point. Face recognition isn't a yes/no verdict; it's a confidence score. The game makes that visible:

• A high match percentage means the algorithm is confident it's you.
• Below 50% counts as fooling it — you win the round.
• Your results screen shows your score, your average match percentage, and the photos where you looked least like yourself to the algorithm.

Why making faces can beat the algorithm

The game's own tips list what tends to work: move your head side to side and up and down, stick out your tongue, laugh, remove glasses, and use your hands to deform your face. These all change the geometry and features the model relies on — head pose, mouth shape, eye region, face outline.

The flip side is the lesson the project is making: you can lower confidence with deliberate distortion, but you can't reliably disappear. A determined system with multiple frames, better angles, or other signals would still have material to work with. The game is a light-hearted demonstration of that gap, not a privacy tool.

What happens to your camera data

According to the site, camera access is required to play, but no personal data is collected. The face recognition algorithm runs entirely in your browser, no photos are uploaded anywhere, and there are no cookies or third-party tracking. The only thing stored is your final score, which the site says acts as a viewer count.

If you're evaluating the game for a classroom or workshop, that local-only design is the relevant detail: the privacy claim is specific and checkable in how the page behaves, and the project is transparent about its purpose.

Who made it and why

Are You You? is an educational project by artist and privacy designer Tijmen Schep, made as part of the Sherpa project — an EU-funded research consortium exploring how AI systems could better protect human rights. The stated goal is to show how difficult it can be to escape face recognition technology, in a light-hearted way. The game carries the #ReclaimYourFace tag and points visitors toward related privacy advocacy.

How to play, step by step

1. Open areyouyou.eu and allow camera access when prompted — the game states this is necessary and that nothing is uploaded.
2. Wait for the face recognition model to load, then look at the camera; your photo is taken after a 5-second countdown.
3. Make faces using the suggested moves until the match meter falls below 50%.
4. Review your results: total score across levels, your average match percentage, and the photos that looked least like you.
5. Optionally download your result picture and share with the privacy-friendly buttons (the site says these contain no third-party tracking).

Common snags: if the camera can't be accessed, the game shows an "Unable to access camera" message — check browser camera permissions. Lighting and distance from the camera affect how consistently the model reads your face, so results vary between attempts.

What to take away

The game is best read as a demonstration of two things at once: face recognition reduces a person to a similarity score, and that score can be manipulated at the edges but not switched off by mugging for the camera. For anyone teaching or learning about facial recognition, it's a concrete, hands-on way to see the confidence number move — and to understand why "just make a funny face" isn't a real defense.

No. According to the site, Are You You? (areyouyou.eu) does not upload your face photos anywhere and does not collect personal data. The face recognition algorithm runs entirely locally in your own browser, and the site states it uses no cookies and no third-party tracking. The only thing stored is your final score, which acts as a viewer count.

What stays on your device

The site's privacy explanation is unusually direct for a camera-based game:

• Camera access is required to play, but the page states that access is necessary only for the game itself.
• The face recognition model loads and runs in your browser. Your photo is taken after a 5-second countdown and compared against your earlier captures on your own machine.
• No pictures of your face are uploaded anywhere. The site says this explicitly ("Period.").
• No cookies and no tracking. The sharing buttons are described as privacy-friendly, and the page states it contains no third-party tracking.
• Only the final score is stored, and it serves as a viewer count.

What this means in practice

Because the matching happens locally, the sensitive part — a live camera image of your face — never needs to leave your device for the game to work. That is the key mechanism: the "AI" you are trying to fool is a model running in the same browser tab as the game.

A useful comparison: many online face-filter or face-test toys send frames to a server for processing. Here, the page's own description says the opposite. If you want to verify, you can open your browser's developer tools, watch the network activity while playing, and check whether image data is being sent out. The site's claim gives you a concrete thing to test rather than just take on faith.

Who made it and why

Are You You? is an educational project by artist and privacy designer Tijmen Schep, made as part of the Sherpa project — an EU-funded research consortium exploring how AI systems could better protect human rights. The stated goal is to show, light-heartedly, how difficult it can be to escape face recognition technology. That context matters for judging the privacy claims: the project's purpose is to demonstrate the technology, not to harvest faces.

The one thing that is stored

The final score is the exception. It is kept as a viewer count, so the site can show how many people have played. That is aggregate gameplay data, not face data — but it is still a record that you played, so treat "no personal data" as referring to your face images and identity, not as "nothing at all is recorded."

Practical checklist before you play

1. Use a browser you trust and keep it updated, since the model runs locally in it.
2. Check camera permissions — grant access only to areyouyou.eu, and revoke it afterward in your browser's site settings if you prefer.
3. Play in a private setting if you are self-conscious; the camera is live during the 5-second countdown.
4. Optionally inspect network traffic during a round to confirm no image uploads, if the privacy claim is the reason you are visiting.
5. Skip it if you don't want any record of playing — the score is stored even though your face is not.

Bottom line

If your concern is whether your face gets uploaded or your identity collected, the site's own documentation says no: processing is local, there are no cookies or third-party trackers, and only an aggregate score is saved. The camera is genuinely used, so grant access deliberately — but the design keeps the face data on your side of the connection.

Are You You? is a free browser-based educational game that challenges you to fool a face recognition algorithm by making funny faces. You win a round when the algorithm's confidence that it is still looking at the same person drops below 50%. The site is an educational project by artist and privacy designer Tijmen Schep, made as part of the Sherpa project, an EU-funded research consortium exploring how AI systems could better protect human rights. It is aimed at anyone curious about how face recognition works and how hard it can be to escape it, presented in a light-hearted way rather than as a technical demo.

What the game actually does

The page loads a face recognition model directly in your browser. You look at the camera, a photo is taken after a five-second countdown, and the algorithm produces a match score for your face. Your job is to deform your face enough that the score falls below the threshold.

The site's own suggested tactics are:

• Move your head from side to side, up and down
• Stick out your tongue
• Laugh
• Remove your glasses
• Use your hands to deform your face

After each attempt you see a percentage match, and at the end the game shows which of your photos looked least like you, your average "you" percentage, and how often the algorithm concluded it was likely the same person. Scores are tracked across three levels plus a "beat the system" bonus, and you can download a picture of your result and share it with the hashtags #AreYouYou and #ReclaimYourFace.

Privacy: what is and isn't collected

This is the part worth checking before you turn on your camera. According to the site:

• The face recognition algorithm runs completely locally in your browser; no pictures of your face are uploaded anywhere.
• No personal data is collected, and there are no cookies or third-party tracking.
• The only thing stored is the final score, which the project uses as a viewer count.
• Camera access is required to play, but the site states it is necessary only for the game itself.

The sharing buttons are described as privacy-friendly and the site says it contains no third-party tracking. If you are evaluating the site for a classroom or workshop, these claims are the relevant ones to verify against your own privacy requirements, since the game cannot run without camera permission.

Who made it and why

Are You You? was developed by Tijmen Schep as part of the Sherpa project, which is supported by the European Union and explores how AI systems could better protect human rights. The stated goal is to show how difficult it can be to escape face recognition technology, but to do so in a light-hearted way. The site also links to the Reclaim Your Face campaign for visitors who want to go further on the topic.

When it's worth trying

Play it if you want a quick, hands-on illustration of how a face recognition model responds to deliberate changes in your appearance, or if you need a discussion starter for a session on privacy and AI. Skip it if you are looking for a technical explanation of how face recognition models are trained or evaluated, or if you cannot or do not want to grant camera access, since the game depends on it. There is no indication on the page of pricing or account requirements; it presents itself as a playable web game with no sign-up described.