Deep Privacy Funnel Model: From a Discriminative to a Generative Approach With an Application to Face Recognition

This research develops a privacy-preserving method for face recognition systems using the Privacy Funnel model, which balances the usefulness of facial data against protecting sensitive information like identity or demographic attributes. The authors introduce new versions of this model, including the Generative Privacy Funnel (GenPF) and deep variational Privacy Funnel (DVPF), and demonstrate that their approach works with modern face recognition systems while reducing information leakage about sensitive attributes.