this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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148
Epstein Files: X Users Are Asking Grok to 'Unblur' Photos of Children (www.bellingcat.com)
submitted 8 hours ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In the days after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) published 3.5 million pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, multiple users on X have asked Grok to “unblur” or remove the black boxes covering the faces of children and women in images that were meant to protect their privacy.

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[–] Barracuda@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

A swirl is a distortion that is non-destructive. Am anonymity blur averages out pixels over a wide area in a repetitive manner, which destroys information. Would it be possible to reverse? Maybe a little bit. Maybe one pixel out of every %, but there wouldn't be any way to prove the accuracy of that pixel and there would be massive gaps in information.

[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 hours ago

Swirl is destfuctive like almost everything in raster graphics with recompressing, but unswirling it back makes a good approximation in somehow reduced quality. If the program or a code of effect is known, e.g. they did it in Photoshop, you just drag a slider to the opposite side. Coming to think of it, it could be a nice puzzle in an adventure game or one another kind of captcha.