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Posted by justswim 12 hours ago

Ghost Font: A font that humans can read but AI cannot(www.mixfont.com)
175 points | 129 commentspage 6
sgjohnson 11 hours ago|
"humans can read"

lol. Barely.

sylware 11 hours ago||
You can also write using sound based/compressed 'text message' dialect: unless a real human is reading, automated watching tool should have a hard time (until coded/ML-ed on such dialects I guess)
exe34 12 hours ago||
I'm colourblind and this was very difficult to read. If it's the directions to the resistance hq, I'd put in the effort. If it's the manifesto, I just wouldn't read it.
gschizas 11 hours ago||
How is it being colorblind affect it? The video is literally black and white only.
exe34 9 hours ago||
I assumed that might be it because that's why I usually struggle with novelty visual stuff, but you're right, it's probably not colour blindness.
not-a-llm 11 hours ago||
this is black and white, I thought color blindness is only for colors?
Razengan 11 hours ago||
heh although this font can be read by AI as other comments say, it gave me an idea:

How about writing or drawing stuff using optical illusions?

Shapes that not even human eyes can see, but the brain hallucinates: Shapes that seem to appear when you look straight at a pattern, or for a second after you look away from a pattern, or after you close your eyes, etc.

If you take a screenshot or a photo the image would just contain the same static pattern.

i.e. qualia-based "cryptography" :)

dewdgi 12 hours ago||
uuh, what's the point? i mean, models will just be trained to understand it
jdiff 11 hours ago|
Why would they be trained to read a research experiment that fundamentally goes against the way they perceive? They can't train on this technique, they can only postprocess it into a form they can perceive.
plastic-enjoyer 11 hours ago||
I've had the same idea recently, and even set up a similar page to experiment with different speeds and noise types. I've had the idea to set up a message board where the font is basically 'GhostFont'. However, in my experiments, I've noticed that the biggest issue is that this only works for larger font sizes. If the text is as small as, for example, on HackerNews, it will become borderline unreadable.

Furthermore, if AI can read this or not depends on how the text sequence is pre-processed. If AI only gets snapshots of the text, it will probably fail in decoding the text as every snapshot contains only white noise and such no information. However, if we calculate the Deltas between the animation frames, the text will become decodable by an AI, you probably don't even need LLMs or CNNs for this.

shalom1112 11 hours ago||
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jackdoe 12 hours ago||
yet
arianvanp 11 hours ago||
"find out with opencv what the hidden message is."

Skill issue on promoter side.

Fable oneshotted it for me.

""" Reveal a motion-camouflaged message hidden in video noise.

How it works: The background noise scrolls vertically at a constant rate (a few px/frame), while the noise inside the letters does not follow that motion. Any single frame looks like pure static. The decode is:

    1. Estimate the background's global motion between consecutive frames
       with phase correlation (this is the "optical flow" step - the motion
       is a pure translation, so one global vector suffices).
    2. Motion-compensate: shift frame t+1 back by that vector so the
       background lines up with frame t.
    3. Take the absolute difference. The background cancels almost
       perfectly; the letters (which don't move with the background)
       light up.
    4. Average the residual over a SHORT window of consecutive frame pairs
       (long windows smear the letters, because the text itself drifts
       slowly over time), blur lightly, and threshold with Otsu.
Usage: python reveal_hidden_message.py input.mp4 [output.png] """

import sys import cv2 import numpy as np

PAIRS = 5 # number of consecutive frame pairs to average (keep small!) BLUR_SIGMA = 6 # spatial blur of each residual, in pixels START_FRAME = 0 # where in the video to start

def load_gray_frames(path, count): cap = cv2.VideoCapture(path) frames = [] while len(frames) < count: ok, frame = cap.read() if not ok: break frames.append(cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY).astype(np.float32)) cap.release() if len(frames) < 2: raise SystemExit("Could not read enough frames from the video.") return frames

def main(): if len(sys.argv) < 2: raise SystemExit(__doc__) src = sys.argv[1] dst = sys.argv[2] if len(sys.argv) > 2 else "revealed_message.png"

    frames = load_gray_frames(src, START_FRAME + PAIRS + 1)
    h, w = frames[0].shape
    acc = np.zeros((h, w), np.float32)

    for i in range(START_FRAME, START_FRAME + PAIRS):
        a, b = frames[i], frames[i + 1]

        # 1) global background motion between the two frames
        (dx, dy), response = cv2.phaseCorrelate(a, b)
        dxi, dyi = int(round(dx)), int(round(dy))
        print(f"pair {i}: background shift = ({dx:+.2f}, {dy:+.2f}) px, "
              f"response = {response:.2f}")

        # 2) motion-compensate frame b by integer (dxi, dyi), then
        # 3) residual = |a - b_shifted| on the overlapping region
        ys = slice(max(0, -dyi), min(h, h - dyi))
        xs = slice(max(0, -dxi), min(w, w - dxi))
        ysb = slice(max(0, dyi), min(h, h + dyi) if dyi < 0 else h)
        # simpler: crop both to the common overlap
        a_ov = a[max(0, -dyi):h - max(0, dyi), max(0, -dxi):w - max(0, dxi)]
        b_ov = b[max(0, dyi):h - max(0, -dyi), max(0, dxi):w - max(0, -dxi)]
        resid = cv2.GaussianBlur(np.abs(a_ov - b_ov), (0, 0), BLUR_SIGMA)
        acc[:resid.shape[0], :resid.shape[1]] += resid

    # 4) normalize + Otsu threshold + light cleanup
    u8 = cv2.normalize(acc, None, 0, 255, cv2.NORM_MINMAX).astype(np.uint8)
    _, mask = cv2.threshold(u8, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)
    kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_ELLIPSE, (5, 5))
    mask = cv2.morphologyEx(mask, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel)

    out = 255 - mask  # black text on white
    cv2.imwrite(dst, out)
    print(f"wrote {dst}")

    # optional: OCR if pytesseract is installed
    try:
        import pytesseract
        text = pytesseract.image_to_string(out, config="--psm 6").strip()
        print("OCR result:\n" + text)
    except ImportError:
        pass

if __name__ == "__main__": main()
senfiaj 11 hours ago|
No, it can https://chatgpt.com/share/6a521e9b-c754-83ed-9d8e-cf653894eb...
gschizas 11 hours ago||
That's the decoy message :)
senfiaj 11 hours ago||
Ah, sorry, yes, tried with a very different message. But it can still read when telling that the text is formed by movement. AI doesn't see the world the way we do, so it's understandable. https://chatgpt.com/share/6a522660-929c-83eb-91ff-66b7873420...
arianvanp 11 hours ago|||
That is not the message. Did you read the article.
senfiaj 11 hours ago|||
I downloaded the message video, renamed it to test.mp4

Still could read https://chatgpt.com/share/6a5221f0-e3fc-83eb-bc15-74420002b6...

bmicraft 10 hours ago||
That's not the message
senfiaj 11 hours ago|||
I gave him this video file https://streamable.com/1bxxyf
huflungdung 11 hours ago||
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