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Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a new type of pixel that can not only be used to create images, but also to analyse them.

This could eventually be used for better in-display cameras where the pixels are used as a image sensors.

The researchers have published their results in Nature recently: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10681-7

Love the technological aspect, hate the practical implications. Any part of any screen can be a camera. Good luck covering that with a post-it.
A privacy nightmare, this WILL be misused systematically. I used to get excited about new technologies like that, but big tech ruined the future for me.
Beautiful! No prole will evade the stare of the Big Brother.

P.S. For the offended at "prole" and /s-agnostic parsers: yes that's who you are for the BB, like it or not. And of course there's nothing beautiful in that.

I agree with the others: this is literally the perfect implementation of literal Big Brother "your TV watches you" tech - this WILL BE ABUSED by Tech Corps + Governments.

We need to stop building surveilance panopticons!

"it is even conceivable that Norris’s pixels could react to a captured image and, without going through a computer, produce corresponding light patterns."

Great, also they invented a digital mirror (and digital fun house mirror).

Maybe the Board of Peace will outlaw this technology in doubleplusquick time before it can be put to use.
You still need a lens to make a camera
Is this really as detrimental to privacy as other comments claim? There are already very small cameras which can be used for adversarial purposes. This technology could be useful for many utilitarian purposes.
A small camera can easily be covered up. You can't cover something that's embedded into the screen itself.
>In the future, this could lead to the development of devices that function as camera and display at the same time.

So literally a telescreen from 1984.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen

Anyone that says they don't value privacy and they have nothing to hide is never willing to install a livestreaming camera in their bedroom and bathroom.

The telescreen doesn't really add anything to what we have today, with camera and screen separated. Perhaps it will what finally removes the last place of privacy for regular people, their home. It's already happened with smart tvs and voice assistants but supposedly they don't record all the time.

Most phones seem to have working permissions, not to say that people won't allow microphone access, but it isn't the default. Pretty sure that there's no option for microphone all the time, unlike location.

I definitely could see a "scandal" when smart TV manufacturers start adding these to analyze peoples reactions to advertising.

Could you put it past them considering they already record your screen by default?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition

It's really absurd that we've boiled the frog until "ads in smart TVs UIs are normal" and now the goalpost was moved to "recording the consumer to show more ads"
> Anyone that says they don't value privacy and they have nothing to hide is never willing to install a livestreaming camera in their bedroom and bathroom.

This company is testing that theory by giving a TV away for free, with built-in second screen for ads, and a camera: https://www.telly.com/

This reminds me of approximately 30 years ago. While dabbling in ham radio, I learned that speakers can work in reverse as microphones, and vice versa.
I mean, LED’s can also work aa light-sensors!
And transistors as light sensors if you decap and expose the semiconductor junction to light
They can, but I have never seen them wired that way in a commercial product.

LEDs can also be used to measure light btw.

There's lots of stuff in an electronic assembly that's microphonic, not just speakers. I don't think it's possible to look at an assembly and conclude that it doesn't contain any microphones.
Glad I’m not the only one who sees the potential issues with these things
Have a little fun by putting a mirror in front of it when it's not in active use. Let them learn themselves.
As usual HN is being incredibly alarmist. Cameras are smaller and cheaper, you can even hide them behind the screen itself to make it harder to cover them up.

We literally had selfie cameras in phones using under display cameras. Surveillance doesn't demand the kind of quality people expect of their phone cameras, making the slight degradation tolerable. Stick a couple with large lenses, under the display in the middle and in each quadrant and you'd be seriously harming your viewing experience.