AI models identify photo locations from visual details, enabling targeted scams
A McAfee study found that openly available AI image recognition models can identify photo locations with 87-91% accuracy by analyzing visual details, without GPS or metadata. The findings raise concerns that scammers could exploit this capability to personalize fraud targeting social media users.
What happened
A McAfee study found that AI models can identify the location where photos were taken by analyzing visual details such as architecture, signage, skylines, light, street markings, storefronts and food stalls, without requiring GPS data, location tags or captions.
Google's Gemma 3 27B and Alibaba's Qwen 3 VL 30B, both open-weight models available without subscription, correctly identified the city and country in 87 per cent and 91 per cent of cases respectively when tested on 21,236 travel images.
Reported impact
The study warns that scammers could use this capability to move from generic phishing to more personalized fraud, taking publicly available vacation photos from social media platforms, using AI to determine their locations, and then crafting more convincing targeted scam messages.
Index analysis
The AI models identified locations by reading visual clues in images, with photos taken at well-known tourist sites or places with distinctive visual features being easier to place, while generic beaches, rural roads and hotel rooms were harder to identify, though the AI often still identified the country.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.