When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

12 December 2005

Face recognition software

Shamelessly yoinked from MetaFilter this morning: Face recognition software.

Historically, primarily used in security applications (by the military and border security to spot undesirables, and by Vegas casinos looking for cheats and card counters) face recognition software is coming of age in the general commercial market as well.

Now there's a geneaology web site that will allow you to upload a picture of yourself and compare it against a database of "family pictures" (or... more fun... a rogue's gallery of over two thousand world celebrities.)

Hysterically, the face-recognition database found high-percentage matches for this headshot of me with:

Aung San Suu Kyi (67%)
John Cusack (61%)
...and, God help us all, Alec Baldwin (56% -- probably later photographs, after he put on all that weight.)

I even matched better-than-50% with Barack Obama.

Your assignment for today: upload a headshot of yourself, run it against the celebrity database, and report back the results (in the comments.)

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