A Face Recognition App that Learns and Grows like a Puppy.
Do you often wonder about looking your age? Do people call you ‘Miss’ or ‘Ma’m’? Which do you feel you deserve? Well, there’s an app for that, thanks to Microsoft’s new facial recognition software.
One of Microsoft’s teams decided to make it into a fun online project, a Website that will guess at your age and gender from a photo. It’s named simply, how-old.net.
We tested it out on a random sample of our team, and well… the results range from pretty accurate to ridiculous. We are a broadly aged group here, but seriously, some of those ages are way, way off.
The software, while fun, is also an amazing example of machine learning technology. These complex algorithms bring us one step closer to computers that understand content, instead of understanding just code. This makes our interactions with technology much more natural and intuitive. As more data is fed into the program, it learns and becomes more accurate. (Another great example is the Rock Paper Scissors Machine, which I have yet to beat without cheating.)
Microsoft’s new Face Recognition App is not completely unique. Facebook has facial recognition for photo tagging and Google does the same thing in its Image Search results. Microsoft’s tool stands alone in the fact that the API is open for third party software developers to play with. This means that we are closer to new and interesting applications in the world of business marketing, inventory keeping, login credentials, and probably a lot of silly games.
Who knows, we might make our own facial recognition program run on a Raspberry Pi.
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