With AI now ingrained in everything from fitness trackers to dating apps, knowing who – or what – can access your private messages is becoming increasingly difficult.
But help is at hand, as scientists have developed a new anti–AI font.
Dubbed the ‘Ghost Font’, the font writes messages using motion.
‘Using a combination of motion, video, noise, and decoys, it’s a unique way to share a message with other real humans,’ explained its developer, Eric Lu.
‘I suppose technically, it’s not a font in the traditional sense of a TTF font file.
‘But, Ghost Font is an experiment of a way to graphically communicate in writing in a format that AI cannot easily understand.
‘While it’s not as legible as regular text, the letters are still immediately readable to a human eye, but even leading AI models can’t decipher it easily.’
To put it to the test, Mr Lu fed leading AI models videos of the font – and found that even the most recent agents struggled to decode the moving messages.
Scientists have developed a new anti–AI font. Dubbed the ‘Ghost Font’, the font writes messages using motion
Mr Lu says his inspiration for the font was ZXX – a typeface created back in 2013 by designer Sang Mun.
ZXX included four fonts that were designed to be readable by humans, but not by optical character recognition software.
‘At the time, this font was deemed “surveillance–proof” – but fast forward to today, and modern AI agents can easily read text rendered in ZXX,’ Mr Lu explained in a blog.
To get around modern AI bots however, Mr Lu had to use motion.
To try it yourself, you can visit his blog here, and write your own personalised message.
‘Type a few words and the letters appear but only because the motion of the dots is visible to a human eye,’ he said.
‘When the video is paused, the static dots blend together, and it becomes impossible to tell just from looking at a single frame what message is embedded in the image.
‘That means that screenshotting the page won’t reveal the message.’
Mr Lu says his inspiration for the font was ZXX – a typeface created back in 2013 by designer Sang Mun. ZXX included four fonts that were designed to be readable by humans, but not by optical character recognition software
To add an extra layer of protection, the Ghost Font even features a sneaky decoy message, which throws most AI bots off the scent.
Mr Lu explained: ‘The decoy message serves as a final trick for a determined agent.
‘When looking for a hidden message, it might first find the decoy message and think that that is the real embedded message in the video.
‘That’s how Ghost Font is able to hide a message even from the strongest thinking models like Fable and GPT Sol 5.6 Ultra.’
Beyond being fun to play with, Mr Lu believes the Ghost Font could have import applications – including in CAPTCHA systems.
He said: ‘It would be interesting to incorporate Ghost Font into CAPTCHA systems, as most systems are easily solved by AI today.
‘Using motion in a video would be a way to make it much more difficult for an automated bot to decipher but still relatively easy for a human to read.’
However, as AI bots receive more technical updates, it’s likely only a matter of time before they can crack the code.
Mr Lu concluded: ‘AI is certainly getting really good.
‘While Ghost Font is hard for AI to read, it’s also pretty hard for humans to read! The gap continues to close.
‘It will be interesting to see what the future holds when it comes to AI perception and multimodal models.’
Several social media users tested the font out this week – with mixed reviews.
Taking to X, one asked: ‘Is this the ultimate CAPTCHA?’
Another added: ‘I don’t see the point of such efforts, even in the short run before AIs catch up.’
And one joked: ‘The only downside is that it drives all who look upon it INSANE.’
