Google’s Street View recently received the green signal in Britain after the company convinced the concerned authorities that it will indeed obscure faces and number plates featured in the images. But researchers at Columbia University have developed an ostensibly better alternative to blurring: face swapping.

The new technology can replace facial features of a person featured in any image with that of someone else. The software is quite smart and picks features from thousands of images available on sites like Flickr. The USP of this software happens to be its ability to function flawlessly without any human intervention or support. Google can certainly give the face swapping software a thought, as it will not only be a more presentable alternative to obscuring but also bring a bit of comic relief.