{
  "id": 17468418,
  "title": "My haunted mirror possesses your reflection with open-weight AI. A player’s idea made it hunt you in the dark",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/31/my-haunted-mirror-possesses-your-reflection-with-open-weight-ai-a",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-31T20:47:11.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/antoniahp/my-haunted-mirror-possesses-your-reflection-with-open-weight-ai-a-players-idea-made-it-hunt-you-515o"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "This is a story about an AI-powered haunted mirror called Scare-TV that uses open-weight models to scare people in various ways. The developer built Scare-TV after a player suggested turning the screen black and adding a loud noise to enhance the scare effect. The resulting \"lights-out mode\" resulted in 44% more scares on average compared to the regular mode.\n\nScare-TV uses a laptop with a webcam and a TV screen to project different ghostly faces onto a person's reflection. These faces include black eyes, a mouth that opens wide, a pale double behind the person, and a grin that isn't their own. The scare can also include a shadowy girl peeking from behind the person's shoulder, melting, or a grimace that isn't their own.\n\nFor the phone version, Scare-TV uses a front camera and MediaPipe Face Mesh to detect faces. It then runs a second open model called SD-Turbo to generate realistic horror faces on the user's device. YOLO-pose then grades these faces to ensure they meet certain criteria before allowing them to scare the person.\n\nScare-TV also offers 20 classic jump scares for those who don't want to use their camera. The server records each person's scare count, the highest jump level achieved (0-10), and whether they ran out of frame. This data is stored in a PostgreSQL database on Render, where a Django admin interface allows the developer to filter data by various parameters. The developer's goal was to create a horror experience that doesn't require any copyrighted characters or pre-recorded samples.",
  "summary": "This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine After trying my haunted mirror, a player sent me the most useful message I got all week: \"Instead of looking at yourself, make the screen go black. Say it can't see you. Then jump out with a really loud noise.\" They were right. If you can watch it coming, you're ready for it. So I built lights-out…",
  "key_points": [
    "Scare-TV is an AI-powered haunted mirror that uses open-weight models to scare people.",
    "Lights-out mode increases scares by 44% on average compared to regular mode.",
    "Scare-TV offers 20 classic jump scares and records user data in a PostgreSQL database."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}