Microsoft can guess your age using facial recognition

This has been flying around the interwebs. Click this link, and you’ll jump to a site that will let you upload a picture of yourself. It’ll then use Microsoft Azure’s Face APIs to guess your age.

The site is powered by Microsoft Azure’s Face APIs that not only recognize features and predict both gender and age. They can also group faces and determine if someone in multiple pictures is the same person. If you’ll recall, Windows 10 will use facial recognition as a log-in option, and the tools that this Azure API offers would certainly come in handy for organizing that personal photo album — expanding features already available in OneDrive.

Apple has long had face recognition software (see iPhoto/Photos). The age guessing aspect is an interesting side note. So is allowing your face to be your fingerprint, enough so to unlock your computer. Does that mean my twin brother (I don’t have one, but allow me this conceit) can unlock my computer? How about other non-genetic dopplegangers? Or, perhaps, a realistic photo I hold up in front of the camera?

The age guessing thing is interesting. But I can’t imagine that technology ever maturing to the point where it is enough of a unique identifier to trust with my login credentials.