6 ms·
Show HN: A People Search Engine with Face Recognition
Hey there HN!
I'm Vignesh, and I'm excited to launch Introthem.com — a people search engine that uses facial recognition to provide in-depth, accurate summaries of individuals, assist with HR screening, research prospects, and analyze brands.
The Problem: Researching individuals - whether for hiring or personalizing outreach - is a time-consuming challenge. While RAG-based search engines can help summarize someone's online presence, they have significant limitations. When multiple people share the same name, these engines often mix their information together, creating inaccurate profiles. Even worse, if someone shares a name with a celebrity or public figure, meaningful research becomes nearly impossible as the well-known person's results overshadow everything else.
The Solution: Introthem solves this using facial recognition to accurately classify and organize information by individual. Simply select the specific person you're interested in, and our engine will generate a comprehensive profile.
But that's not all – remember how we typically perform multiple queries to look up someone? For example, if a person founded a company, we then look up how that company is doing. Introthem handles this in-depth research automatically. It generates additional queries based on the first summary the engine produces – what I internally call Content-aware query generation. This helps you conduct thorough research about someone just by their name.
Try it now at https://introthem.com https://introthem.com
Would love to hear your feedback, HN!
Demo:
Link 1: https://introthem.com/search?uuid=51d6bc6a-08ad-464e-b4f1-1658b96fec45 https://introthem.com/search?uuid=51d6bc6a-08ad-464e-b4f1-16...
Link 2: https://introthem.com/search?uuid=9f3ad850-1c72-4e8c-ad36-0725f4595144 https://introthem.com/search?uuid=9f3ad850-1c72-4e8c-ad36-07...
Link 3: https://introthem.com/search?uuid=3f31072e-bf74-4ff2-b1ef-ee8b0a101419 https://introthem.com/search?uuid=3f31072e-bf74-4ff2-b1ef-ee...
- matteason 2y agoHow much have you investigated the legality of this? In the EU biometric data is 'special category data' under the GDPR [0] and can only be processed in very limited circumstances unless you have the consent of the data subject [1] [0] https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/organisations/know-your-obligations/lawful-processing/special-category-data https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/organisations/know-your-obl... [1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-9-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-9-gdpr/
- vignesh_warar 2y agoThanks for the info. We don't use any private data, only publicly available images. So it won't be a problem, in my opinion. I will contact my lawyer and double check this.
- matteason 2y agoYou might want to look up Clearview AI, who also took publicly available images, performed biometric recognition on them and ended up with a €30.5 million fine: https://blog.barracuda.com/2024/10/23/clearview-ai-fine-gdpr-violations https://blog.barracuda.com/2024/10/23/clearview-ai-fine-gdpr...
- vignesh_warar 2y agoI just did research on this. Clearview vs Introthem: - Clearview does photo-to-photo matching. We don't do that, and I don't think I will ever build that. - You have to provide the name, then we build the faces collection for analyzing at search time and delete it. - We don't retain any face collection once the search is done. I still don't know if I am breaking any laws, but here is how Introthem works.
- mathgeek 2y agoYou should definitely find out if you are breaking any laws.
- josefritzishere 2y ago100% this is illegal in Illinois. They have specific biometric data protections. Probably also a crime elsewhere.
- knxnts 2y agoyes. and there will be more state laws in the future. seems like it would raise some FCRA concerns to me.
- dgfitz 2y ago> The Problem: Researching individuals - whether for hiring or personalizing outreach So you're helping people profile others based on how they look? Aren't we trying to move away from that?
- vignesh_warar 2y agoNo, we don't. I think my copy might have been confusing. We are simply Perplexity for people - we just summarize a person's internet presence.
- clueless 2y agodoesn't seem to be doing that. It's essentially a glorified google reverse image where the input is a face, then it probably uses the metadata gleaned from that search to look up further info for that person. Will it be accurate? we will have to see
- pimlottc 2y ago“Researching individuals for personalized outreach” is the creepiest sentence I’ve read this month
- rashidae 2y agoThis is such a cool angle for lead gen. Just the other day, I saw some kids using those Ray-Ban/Meta glasses through Instagram Live feeds to grab publicly available data from people almost in real time. It blew my mind. Sure, this kind of tech will probably go through a lot of scrutiny and for good reason, but whether it’s a consumer product or a custom internal tool, it’s happening. Excited to see where this goes.
- vignesh_warar 2y agoThank you for the feedback :)
- pickledoyster 2y agoI was hoping to find an /s at the end.
- sfmz 2y agoI think you need a FAQ. In the FAQ you could explain how its not going to be a useful tool for stalkers because that's where my mind goes, maybe I watch too many DateLines.
- vignesh_warar 2y agoThank you! Exactly - this won't be useful for stalkers. We don't crawl or index social media pictures. Will add FAQ section.
- cosmotic 2y agoUsing biometric data without permission may be illegal. Facebook was sued in Illinois over this.
- josefritzishere 2y agoThis product is moderately terrifying. I hope it's illegal to be honest.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bottom999mottob 2y agoSo I tried to search myself just to see how terrible/awesome this product is. On attempting to use the free plan: Error: Failed to subscribe to the plan. You ran out of credits. Please upgrade your Plan Dark pattern, lack of testing, or incompetence? Please do better if you're contributing to the Orwellian surveillance capitalist state
- vignesh_warar 2y agoThank you for trying. We are being rate-limited. We are currently fixing it. Edit: Fixed!
- connor11528 2y agohow are you harvesting all this data?
- vignesh_warar 2y agoIt's just the Bing search API under the hood. The process is: Query -> Crawl -> Categorize profiles.
- dankwizard 2y agoOh man if this gets popular - you're gone. Open and shut case.
- popalchemist 2y agoThough novel, this is pretty unethical.
- georgehill 2y agoPretty solid product but you definitely need to check your face recognition feature, whether it complies with laws.
- pogue 2y agoI tried the first link in the demo & it immediately just said I was out of credits. Brave Browser on Android.
- vignesh_warar 2y agoSorry, I temporarily paused it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42194170#42202922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42194170#42202922
- vignesh_warar 2y agoThank you for the feedback, everyone. I am temporarily pausing and making sure I am within legal limits. If not, I will completely remove face recognition and try other routes to solve the problem. Vignesh
- TudorAndrei 2y agoI have tried to use it, but as soon as I search for someone after log-in, it says that I ran out of credits.
- vignesh_warar 2y agoSorry, I temporarily paused it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42194170#42202922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42194170#42202922
- NaolGBasaye 2y agoI tried signing up for the free version, but I keep getting an error toast.
- vignesh_warar 2y agoSorry, I temporarily paused it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42194170#42202922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42194170#42202922 reply