  In this paper, we design and evaluate a convolutional autoencoder that
perturbs an input face image to impart privacy to a subject. Specifically, the
proposed autoencoder transforms an input face image such that the transformed
image can be successfully used for face recognition but not for gender
classification. In order to train this autoencoder, we propose a novel training
scheme, referred to as semi-adversarial training in this work. The training is
facilitated by attaching a semi-adversarial module consisting of a pseudo
gender classifier and a pseudo face matcher to the autoencoder. The objective
function utilized for training this network has three terms: one to ensure that
the perturbed image is a realistic face image; another to ensure that the
gender attributes of the face are confounded; and a third to ensure that
biometric recognition performance due to the perturbed image is not impacted.
Extensive experiments confirm the efficacy of the proposed architecture in
extending gender privacy to face images.
