Yamaha facial recognition system spots gender, age

Facial recognition systems may raise hackles among privacy advocates — especially when they're used for law enforcement — but they continue to improve, and developers remain on the lookout for new ways to use them. Yamaha has unveiled a new system that the company says can recognize whether someone is male or female, and estimate their age. Accuracy is rated at 88% for gender (which Yamaha says is on par with the human eye) and 77% for age. The company says the technology could be used by retail establishments to profile customers and guide them to appropriate products. We can only imagine the more nefarious purposes this could be put to, not to mention the embarrassing mistakes it could help avoid if incorporated into camphones and used by denizens of certain dark, crowded nightspots.

[Travis Beard @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Does it work with Micheal Jackson?

[Bob @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I can imagine dating services using a picture of your ex to find your next lover, haha.

[KC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Does it work with Dennis Rodman?

[Captain Obvious @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

does it work with Richard Simmons?

[ela2 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

How about K.D. Lang, Ellen Degenerate, Drew Carey, Rosey O'donnel?

[TheBlunderbuss @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

5. Drew Carey? Why him?

The technology could help prove I wasn't at the Sack o' Suds killing the clerk.

[thatoneguy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

"We can only imagine the more nefarious purposes this could be put to."

Really... would you care to enlighten us. I don't see any possible nefarious applications of a device that can tell whether you're male or female. My guess is, the age detection is accurate within a group of years since nobody ages along some sort of mathematical curve visually.

[Rusty Shackleford @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

What about cyborgs? Can it spot those? That will soon be the most critical feature, if the human race is to survive.

Male, female, we've been finding each other with 88% accuracy and that's quite good enough to quickly overpopulate the world, and the 12% who make the error have an interesting alternate sort of experience to talk about on Oprah.

Old, young, it doesn't really matter as long as it's legal and there's attraction and chemistry and a strong enough cardiovascular system to survive the mating.

But being able to spot cybernetic organisms before they spot you, that's life-saving technology there, and really where we should be directing this sort of technology. Because in the end these cyborgs don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't feel pity, and they absolutely will not stop until we're dead.

[John Doe. @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Damn! Travis nabbed the #1 joke...ok...

Does it work with Prince?

...not nearly as good.

[ultraF1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Is it just my imagination or is Yamaha in just about every business imaginable. What's next... shoes?

[Dan McCarty @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

88% recognition is on par with the human eye? I doubt it. I don't walk around wondering if one in every ten people is a man or woman. (Unless I'm at a Melissa Etheridge concert...)

[GeneMack @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

"88% recognition is on par with the human eye? I doubt it. I don't walk around wondering if one in every ten people is a man or woman."

I would venture to say that 88% is correct. Sure, you don't "walk around wondering", but your brain takes a mental note of the sex of each person that comes into your field of vision, wheter you consciencely think about it or not.

And mistaking 10-15 of those sexes doesn't seem too far fetched to me.

[GeneMack @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

That was supposed to be "10-15 out of every 100"

[Van Mardian @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

They mean to say that 12 out of 100 people look like Pat (SNL) to us? I don't think so. And with respect to age, what kind of window are they talking about? 77% chance of getting the exact number of years? That's hard to believe. A five year window I could believe

[Kiryen @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

um. Gackt?

[Google Nazi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Damn it!! Before clicking on comments i thought I was going to be the only one saying this but I was wrong... "Will it work on Michael Jackson?"

-_- I feel ashamed lol

[hydrogen_wv @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I reckon the 12% gender inaccuracy accounts for those certain 'dark, crowded nightspots'.

Sometimes you just gotta do the infamous crocodile dundee crotch-grab to figure it out..