Google researchers have come up with a tool that can detect when someone other than you is having a peek at your phone. This is a really useful privacy feature, but is still in its early stages, and we’re not sure when it’ll be available to consumers.

People have the tendency to peek at others phones, specially in a train or a bus or when a phone’s display is in your line of sight. This new tool, designed by Google researchers Hee Jung Ryu and Florian Schroff, will help keep those prying eyes off your phone.

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The tool uses the front camera and artificial intelligence to track faces and eye movements and tells you when someone is looking directly at your phone. For example, when you’re in a messaging app and someone behind you is trying to read you texts, the tool will launch the camera and alert you that someone is looking.

You will also get an alert message saying ‘Stranger is Looking’ and the strangers face placed in a red box and also a rainbow coming out of their mouth. That last part is mostly for pure fun purposes, but it’s impressive how fast it all works. Watch the demo video below;

The researchers are calling this an Electronic Screen Protector. They will be showcasing it at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference that’s taking place next week in Long Beach, California.

According to them, the system can work under well both during the day and low light conditions. It can also detect different poses. The tool can detect a human gaze in just 2 milliseconds, and a face in 47 milliseconds. The tool is run on the phone itself, which is why it’s so fast.

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This tool is a must for all those who care about privacy and who don’t want strangers having a glance at their sensitive data. We’re not sure when or if it’ll make to mobile devices, but we’ll let you know when there’s more information available.

Source: NIPS