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Since 2001, the Google Street View truck has been rolling through neighborhoods all over the world, taking photos of our towns and city streets in order add to its parent company’s enormous library of 3D street-level images. In the search for the perfect panoramic image, however, Google doesn’t always have time to wait around for the streets they’re mapping to clear, leading to the occasional unintentional photobomber.

Luckily, Google also has a pretty advanced facial technology recognition system, used to blur out the faces of those caught on camera as a way of protecting their privacy. The only caveat is that sometimes it works a little too well, and to hilarious results.

Google’s face-blurring tech is not only wise, but a necessity for countries like Japan, where Portrait Rights means that a photographer can be sued for publishing an image of someone taken in public if that person feels it infringes upon their privacy or harms their reputation.

Although there seem to be few lawsuits brought up over publicly posted photographs outside of the entertainment world, many Japanese consider it in poor taste not to take measures to obscure the face of anyone who has not given explicit consent to have their photograph posted online, especially when it comes to minors.

But when it comes to Google, it appears that there’s no such thing as being too cautious. Not stopping at only people’s faces, their system also goes the extra mile and blurs out any inanimate objects with facial-like features, like in the following pictures:

▼ “Street View really went out of its way to respect the privacy of the Ushiku Daibutsu (Ushiku Buddha).”

▼ Did Google manage to confuse this statue’s naughty bits with its face or does this fall under art censorship instead?

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▼ Looks like the boss stepped out for a moment and is currently unavailable.

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▼ Sure we’ve all been embarrassed by dad a few times, but this is a little extreme.

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▼ Maybe Dave Thomas’s daughter finally got tired of being associated with a poor fast food diet…

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Humor aside, having an ugly shot of you immortalized on the internet forever is a pretty gruesome fate, so we’re glad Google is sticking to “better safe than sorry” on this one.

Source: My Game News Flash, Twitter/@ktzgw 
Feature/top image: My Game News Flash
Insert images: My Game News Flash