Blurring service: Lithuania, Baltics, EU
GDPR blurring and anonymisation service
AKYS scans cities. Every drive comes back full of faces and number plates, so AKYS built its own AI blurring pipeline: faces and vehicle licence plates are blurred automatically before the data is stored or delivered, in line with EU GDPR. That pipeline is not a tool we bought; it is one we run in production on our own data, at city scale. It is now available as a service on your imagery and video.
Built for our own data first
Most anonymisation vendors sell software they have never had to depend on. AKYS came at it from the other end. The company captures street-level data with an 11K 360° camera, dual mobile LiDAR, thermal and stereo, and that data cannot be stored, delivered or turned into a digital twin until the people in it are unidentifiable. Blurring was not a feature request. It was the condition of the business existing.
So the pipeline is custom-built and in-house, it sits between capture and storage rather than being bolted on afterwards, and it runs on every drive. That is a different kind of confidence from a demo: it is the pipeline AKYS trusts with its own liability, offered to organisations facing the same problem on their own material.
Face blurring
AI models locate and blur faces in imagery and video, so people in the frame are no longer identifiable.
Licence plate blurring
Vehicle number plates are blurred by the same pipeline, the other identifier ordinary street footage carries.
Anonymised first
On AKYS data the blurring runs before anything is stored or delivered, not as a later clean-up pass.
Our own pipeline
Custom-built and operated by AKYS on its own city-scale capture, not a licensed third-party product.
Who needs image and video anonymisation
If you hold imagery or video with people or vehicles in it, and you intend to store, publish or share it, the identifiers have to go first. These are the situations the pipeline suits. Scope and deliverables are agreed per project.
Mapping and survey companies
Street-level and site imagery that has to be anonymised before it lands in an archive or goes to a client: the exact problem AKYS solved for itself.
Fleet and dashcam operators
Continuous road-facing video accumulates faces and number plates by default. Anonymise it before it is retained or handed on.
Municipalities
Street imagery held or published by a city, where the material is public-facing and the privacy obligation is not optional.
CCTV and security footage holders
Recorded material that must be shared, released or kept, with the people in it no longer identifiable.
Researchers publishing street imagery
Imagery attached to a paper or an open release, where publication puts identifiable people permanently in the open.
Dataset builders
Anyone assembling an imagery or video dataset for training or distribution. Anonymise it before it is shared or sold on.
The pipeline and the capture behind it
The blurring pipeline was built around the AKYS rig, which is why it has had to cope with hard material: 11K spherical frames, night and low-light drives, plates at traffic speed. Everything below is the setup it runs on in production: what the service is capable of, quoted per project.
| Blurred automatically | Faces and vehicle licence plates, by AKYS's own AI models |
|---|---|
| When | Before data is stored or delivered, EU GDPR compliance by design |
| Origin | Custom-built in-house pipeline, run in production on AKYS's own capture |
| Offered on | Other organisations' imagery and video, as a service |
| Proven at | City-scale multisensor capture: 11K 360° imagery, LiDAR, thermal, stereo |
| 360° camera | Insta360 Titan: 11K, 360°, 10-bit colour, 8 × Micro Four Thirds |
| Video handled on the rig | 11K/30fps · 10K 3D/30fps · 8K/60fps · 5.3K/120fps |
| Other sensors | Dual mobile LiDAR, 2 × ZED 2i stereo, LWIR thermal, 5 × fisheye |
| Positioning | RTK-GNSS + 6-axis IMU, ±3 cm |
| Formats AKYS works with | 11K 360° panoramas, .las / .laz point clouds, GeoJSON / CSV, COCO-formatted datasets |
| Your material | Send us the footage and the deliverable you need: [email protected] |
| Also available | Data annotation: COCO-formatted labelling |
| Pricing | Quoted per project: [email protected] |
Where blurring stops and legal advice begins
Worth being direct about this, because plenty of vendors are not. The pipeline is built for EU GDPR compliance, and it is what AKYS relies on for its own data. What it does is remove the two identifiers that ordinary imagery and video carry: faces and licence plates. That is a technical control, and a substantial one.
It is not a compliance certificate. Your lawful basis, your retention policy, your contracts and your own assessment are yours; AKYS does not audit them, certify them or advise on them. If someone offers to sell you compliance rather than blurring, that is a reason to be suspicious of them, not of the distinction.
Blurring, and annotation on the same material
Anonymisation and labelling tend to arrive together, because the material that must be blurred before storage is often the same material someone wants to train on afterwards. AKYS does both: the blurring on this page, and data annotation on imagery, video and point clouds, with COCO-formatted datasets as an output.
And if the underlying problem is that you do not have the imagery yet, AKYS captures it too: see mobile mapping, 360° Photography and AI detection. Anything captured that way is blurred by this pipeline as a matter of course.
Frequently asked questions
What is a GDPR blurring service?
It is the anonymisation of imagery and video before it is stored, published or shared, so that the people and vehicles caught in it are no longer identifiable. In practice that means face blurring and licence plate blurring, because a face and a number plate are the two things in ordinary street or site footage that most directly identify a person. AKYS built this pipeline for its own mobile mapping data (faces and vehicle licence plates are blurred by AI models before the data is stored or delivered, in line with EU GDPR) and now runs it as a service on imagery and video belonging to other organisations.
Can AKYS blur our footage, or only its own scans?
Yours. The pipeline was built for AKYS's own capture, but it is not tied to it; it is offered as a service on other companies' imagery and video. It suits mapping and survey firms, fleet and dashcam operators, municipalities, holders of CCTV and security footage, researchers publishing street imagery, and teams assembling datasets. Send us the footage and the deliverable you need, and we will tell you what we can do with it: [email protected].
What does the pipeline blur?
Faces and vehicle licence plates. Those are the two classes AKYS's own AI models are built to find and blur automatically, and they are what the pipeline runs on in production across city-scale capture. If your material needs something beyond those two classes anonymised, describe it to [email protected] rather than assuming. The honest answer is that it depends on the material.
Does this make us GDPR compliant?
It handles one part of the problem, not all of it. The pipeline is built for EU GDPR compliance and is what AKYS relies on for its own data, but your compliance depends on your lawful basis, your retention, your contracts and your own assessment. AKYS blurs imagery; AKYS does not certify your compliance, audit you, or give legal advice. Treat the blurring as the technical control it is, and keep your own counsel for the rest.
What formats do you accept and what does it cost?
AKYS works with 11K 360° panoramas, .las and .laz point clouds, GeoJSON and CSV, and COCO-formatted datasets on its own projects, and handles ordinary imagery and video alongside them. Rather than guess at your codec or delivery route, send us the footage and the deliverable you need and we will confirm what fits. Pricing is quoted per project, because a folder of stills and a multi-camera video archive are not the same job: [email protected].
Send us what needs anonymising
Tell us what the material is (stills, video, a route, an archive) and what you need back. Pricing is quoted per project.