Artificial intelligence (AI), while celebrated as a productivity powerhouse, has a darker and creepier side that’s impossible to ignore.
Although AI can solve intricate problems and streamline processes, it can also spread misinformation and create autonomous systems with minimal human oversight.
At its worst, it conjures images of dystopian futures filled with rogue AI-powered robots—a scenario no one wants to imagine.
As society becomes more familiar with AI tools like ChatGPT—whether for disputing parking tickets or answering complex questions—we’re beginning to grasp the technology’s full potential. However, while AI may feel new to many, it has long been on the radar of industry leaders and tech pioneers.
One AI-driven website, in particular, has unnerved users and earned the label of “the most disturbing AI website on the internet.”
The platform, PimEyes, utilizes AI to identify and locate other online photos of a person by analyzing a single uploaded image. Its capabilities have sparked both fascination and fear.
Some users have branded it a “stalker’s dream,” while others see its utility in protecting their online image.
The process is straightforward: upload a photo of yourself, and the AI will scour the internet to find all matching images.
When a LADbible team member tested PimEyes, their feedback was mixed: “It’s perhaps better at finding your doppelgängers than it is at tracking down every picture of you on the internet, but it is incredibly fast.
“The first two were pictures of me, though the remaining six were images of other people who shared some similar facial features, mostly the eyebrows and the beard.”
Despite these quirks, another user found the site both “disturbing but also extremely valuable,” highlighting its potential for tracking down unauthorized uses of personal photos and enabling users to demand their removal.
PimEyes is not the first AI tool to function in unexpected ways. In a lighter example, parcel delivery company DPD had to pull its AI chatbot offline after a customer tricked it into writing a poem that included a swear word.
While tools like PimEyes showcase the double-edged nature of AI, they also remind us of its capacity for both incredible benefits and unsettling consequences.