FACE DETECTION software has slowly crept into mainstream use, from Facebook photo tagging to Android phone unlocking. But age detection? Yes, you heard it right. Microsoft has created a terribly powerful machine that will judge your age using algorithms. You give it a picture, and it gives you almost instantaneous judgement, complete with gender assignment. The software giant’s newest analysis tool—How-Old.net—has become the latest Internet craze. The tool allows you to upload a photo of yourself and wait for the program to detect your face. It will then guess your gender and age.
Behind the scenes, Microsoft is using machine learning to better churn through the untold number of photos on the Internet. That is not an easy job, and one that almost every search company is trying to get just right. So what’s the point of this? Microsoft says it’s for “obtaining real time insights” on the data it’s gathering about people’s gender and age. It also means you can give it countless photos of your friends, family, celebrities, and mythological creatures and see how badly they get mangled. Forget Minesweeper or Solitaire—this is the best game Microsoft has bestowed upon humanity.
The site was supposed to be a small and quiet test, though Microsoft says the 50 people it sent emails to about it managed to proverbially blow up its spot. “We were shocked,” two members of Microsoft’s machine learning group wrote on Microsoft’s technical blog. “Within a few hours, over 35,000 users had hit the page from all over the world (about 29,000 of them just from Turkey, as it turned out—apparently there were a bunch of tweets from Turkey mentioning this page).”
This isn’t Microsoft’s first brush with the detection software game. Recently, the American tech giant received a patent to develop eyeglasses that could allow us to see what other people are thinking or feeling by sensing their emotions.
The patent is for what the technology giant calls “a wearable emotion detection feedback system”.
“Basically, it’s a pair of glasses that can tell whether the people around you are happy or sad, friendly or unfriendly, excited or calm… just by looking at them,” says a US-based technology expert, Dan Misener.
The emotion-sensing glasses also claim to be able to tell if someone is flirting. The spectacles are regular see-through glasses that have cameras and microphones built into them. When you’re looking at someone, the sensors measure the person’s facial features and where their eyes are focused, while the microphone measures speech patterns and rhythm.
That information is then sent to Microsoft in real time, and compared against databases of facial and audio patterns. Microsoft’s servers then crunch the data, and send back an analysis to whoever is wearing the glasses.
“To be clear, this is a patent application,” says Misener, adding, “We don’t know if this will turn into a product that you or I could go out and buy in the store. And Microsoft isn’t saying.”
This type of technology could be helpful for those on the autism spectrum. But some say it should be approached with caution. “Technology companies who are working in this area really need to consider the context of what they’re putting out there and what is the need and the emotional state of the person who is using it,” says Scott Smith, a futurist with the research and consulting group, Changeist.
There are also privacy considerations and Smith worries that in the rush to commercialise emotional technology, there is a risk of trivialising real human emotion.
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