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Surprising Science

Erasing Corporate Logos

New documenting technology can recognize and delete corporate logos caught in the field of view of your smartphone camera or video recorder. Other artistic uses are proliferating.

“Call it advertisement hacking. Technology-inspired artists have designed ways for you to mask or perhaps even delete company logos in your field of view as you wander around a city or shopping center. The trend subverts a technology called augmented reality (AR), by which virtual information—say restaurant ratings—is overlain on the real world as you peer through smart glasses or a smartphone camera. New York artist Jeff Crouse has designed a program called Unlogo, which detects corporate logos in a video stream, then replaces them. … The project is still under development and does not yet run in real time, but Crouse’s goal is to produce a video filter for removing logos from, say, home movies.”


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