How to be insulted online by face recognition software and what to do about it
Has everyone used MyHeritage.com ? You get to upload a photo can then they compare your details with a bunch of ‘celebrities’ and come back with list designed to insult you. At least that happened to me!
You go to the site, click on Face Recognition, and then Celebrity Collage upload a photo - marvel as the software finds your face, watch it do a search and gape in amazement at the results. What! No Johnny Depp? No Russell Brand? No Ian McShane!
I don’t recognise most of these people. Some I know, and never considered myself looking like, but really… Danny Devito? And does Danny Devito look like Ronan Keating?
- Ronan Keating - eerm, not cool
- Elfriede Jelinek - don’t know what she does, but a ’she’!
- Maria Montessori - another she!
- Peter Sarsgaard - don’t know him, but at least a he with a beard
- Walter Gropius - ok, architecture, creative, Bauhaus
- Gareth Gates - why so much wibbly pop stuff, what no rock!, what no soul!
- Robert Barany - looks like a doctor
- Aaron Kwok - don’t recognise him, but he would more likely feel insulted by the comparison
- Danny Devito - what! Not sure about this now.
- Cheryl Tweedy - who she! she! …Google… - what more girly pop!
So if this happens to you, upload a new photo until you get results that you can live with.
upload…upload… upload…upload… Ah, ok, enough! that will have to do…
- Hmm, not sure that I really count as a good match for Martin Luther King though, but MyHeritage knows best and matched me 67% to Martin Luther King, perhaps Myheritage has managed to see my inner integrity.
- Ian Anderson from JethroTull - cool (I think I would have preferred the early freaky ThisWas look though).
- Willem Dafoe - cool, but not in full Green Goblin attire.
- Billy Crystal - ok, funny funny, obviously I have a sense of humour
- Drew Fuller - don’t know him
- Viggo Mortensen - from Lord of the Rings, ok, don’t feel insulted by that
- Alec Baldwin - well, ok, at least he played The Shadow
- Johnny Damon - don’t know him either
- J. M. Barrie - ok, well I liked Peter Pan the novel
- Dannii Mingoue - what! - and how does Dannii Minogue look like Martin Luther King?
So there you have it, a scientific test of Face Recognition software. And if at first you feel insulted, try try again. No doubt chortling with mirth as you do so.
I think the celebrities probably have more right to feel insulted than I do.
