Computer designed to pick out hotties; Analyzing facial features could have
Greetings! I’m Nico Trimoff, manager of transcription and accessibility services at www.sterlingcreations.ca.
Today, I have chosen a very interesting article to share with you. One that may appeal to those who consider themselves to be “Hotties.”
I invite you now to read on.
Have a great day.
Computer designed to pick out hotties; Analyzing facial features could have
applications in health, marketing
Frances Willick
Edmonton Journal , July 19, 2009
The computer analyzes every pore, pimple and wrinkle. It notices your
slightly asymmetrical ears, the distance between your eyes and that
chickenpox scar on your forehead. Then, it rates your attractiveness on a
scale of one to 10.
Sound like a nightmare?
It’s actually the handiwork of a Canadian student who has trained a computer
system to recognize the characteristics of human attractiveness and rate
people’s appearance using photographs.
Josh Chauvin, a philosophy and psychology student at the University of
Windsor in Ontario, said his study shows it may be possible to create a
computer or “artificial neural network” capable of producing human-like
evaluations.
“At first, I just started the project out of interest,” he said. “It wasn’t
until later that I saw there could be other implications.”
Thirty-three University of Windsor students volunteered for the potentially
self-esteem-crushing, scientific version of Am I Hot or Not? during a
research project conducted by the third-year undergraduate student.
Photos were first rated by humans, and those ratings were fed to the
computer. Then, the system was asked to rate the attractiveness of 33 new
images. Chauvin said the computer’s ratings fell within one point of the
human participants’ ratings 86 per cent of the time.
Chauvin said the research, conducted under the direction of Marcello Guarini
from University of Windsor’s philosophy department and Chris Abeare from the
department of psychology, goes beyond narcissistic curiosity.
The computer system could be used to diagnose congenital illnesses that are
known to correlate with certain facial features. For example, while Down
syndrome is normally easily identifiable by facial features, other illnesses
are manifested more subtly. Chauvin said the pattern-recognition program
could help diagnose those illnesses using facial features.
The system could also be useful for marketers and advertisers to gauge the
popularity of a product without having to poll human subjects, Chauvin said.
The study found that both males and females rated females as more
attractive.
On a scale of one to 10, with one described as “very unattractive” and 10 as
“very attractive,” mean attractiveness ratings by humans for each face
ranged from 2.27 to 7.83 with a mean of 4.97–what the study would deem
“somewhat unattractive.”
Chauvin’s research has earned him a spot on the roster at the International
Conference on Neural Computation in Portugal in October.
Chauvin said he is considering expanding the study to analyze personality
traits using facial features.
“There’s an idea that personality gets written on our faces after time
–that it’s possible to make personality judgments based on facial features.
We do that all the time. Before we meet someone, we gauge their personality
on zero acquaintance, without having met them.”
Other studies have shown that personality characteristics are assessed
within a tenth of a second of meeting someone new.
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About Donna Jodhan
Donna Jodhan is an award winning blind author, advocate, sight loss coach, blogger, podcast commentator, and accessibility specialist.
