How old do you look? That’s the question that has been on everyone’s mind since Microsoft launched a strange yet catchy website that analyzes a photo and tells you how old you really look.
The #HowOldRobot caught on at the end of April of this year when industry blogs and social media channels began posting links to the site. Immediately, developers at Microsoft could tell they had a hit on their hands.
“We were expecting perhaps 50 users for a test but, in the end, got over 35,000 users and saw the whole thing unfold in real time,” one of the app’s creators said in a Microsoft blog post.
So how did this robot come about?
“We were building a demo for the day 2 keynote of Microsoft’s Build2015 developer conference. We wanted to showcase how developers can easily and quickly build intelligent applications using Azure services. Using our newly released Face detection API’s we set up an age guessing website called http://how-old.net on Azure.”
But the developers admit the robot is not the best at guessing ages, leaving some people minimally offended and others overjoyed.
“The API is reasonably good at locating the faces and identifying gender, but it isn’t particularly accurate with age, but it’s often good for a laugh and users have fun with it.”
Speaking of fun, we tried a short experiment to see how old some Vancouverites really look. There were some big winners, such as Christy Clark, Bif Naked, Jimmy Pattison and Jillian Harris who all looked younger than they really are, but a few happened to appear much older.
Take a look at how old the #HowOldRobot found these Vancouver personalities, then go find out for yourself at How-old.net.
Michael Buble
Actual age: 39
Image: Heyitsnance via Flickr / How Old Do I Look?
Vikram Vij
Actual age: 50
Image: How Old Do I Look?
Jim Chu
Actual age: 56
Image: Vancouver Police Department via Flickr / How Old Do I Look?
Seth Rogen
Actual age: 33
Image: Wikimedia Commons / How Old Do I Look?
Geroy Simon
Actual age: 39
Image: Wikimedia Commons / How Old Do I Look?
Ryan Holmes
Actual age: 40
Image: Kris Krug via Flickr / How Old Do I Look?
Gregor Robertson
Actual age: 50
Image: Mayor of Vancouver / How Old Do I Look?
Christy Clark
Actual age: 49
Image: BC Legislation / How Old Do I Look?
Trevor Linden
Actual age: 45
Image: Richard Schmon for ClearlyContacts.ca / How Old Do I Look?
Bif Naked
Actual age: 43
Image: Bif Naked via Facebook / How Old Do I Look?
Chip Wilson
Actual age: 58
Image: Chip Wilson via Lululemon video screen grab / How Old Do I Look?
Jimmy Pattison
Actual age: 86
Image: Jim Pattison Group / How Old Do I Look?
Jillian Harris
Actual age: 35
Image: Jillian Harris via Facebook / How Old Do I Look?
Steve Nash
Actual age: 41
Image: Wikimedia Commons / How Old Do I Look?
David Suzuki
Actual age: 79
Image: David Suzuki / How Old Do I Look?
Tamara Taggart
Actual age: 47
Image: Tamara Taggart via Facebook / How Old Do I Look?
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