The concept of not touching your face might seem easy in theory, but to actually put it into practice is another story. One of the best ways to prevent infection by coronavirus is to follow the global guidelines set by the WHO – which also happens to be extremely hard.
Enter: donottouchyourface.com, the site that will literally shout at you if you touch your face. It’s pretty simple. An algorithm learns the position of your face, and can detect when you’re touching it and when you’re not. If you are, you can expect a very loud “NO” to notify you. Think of it as artificial intelligence being put to good use.
“Using your webcam, you train a machine learning algorithm (specifically Tensorflow.js) to recognize you touching your face and not touching your face. Once it’s trained, it watches and alerts you when you touch your face,” explained the creators.
Since most of us are spending a lot more time at home, either working or aimlessly browsing the internet, you can leave the website open as a tab as you go on about your day. It’s a way to train yourself to not touch your face that often—if not for prevention of a deadly virus, then just for the sake of your skin.
Don’t worry, the site does not keep any info or videos of you. “This entire site runs locally—all the calculations from your webcam and alerts are done on your computer and are never sent over the internet,” the creators stressed.
But, don’t let your hopes get too high—no algorithm can completely prevent you from getting the virus. “but it might help,” the creators say.
The only way to really prevent yourself from catching the virus is staying home and practicing social distancing, especially from other people who are sick.
