Recently, I heard about a new (free) website that estimates ages using facial recognition in photographs. This is a new age technology and one which is still being developed. If this website came close estimating ages of people in my photos, this would be a great tool for genealogical research. I decided to try it out.

How Old Do I Look? is apparently affiliated/owned by Microsoft and has a home page that looks like this:

It states that the website doesn’t save photos which are uploaded. How many hits and misses would there be?

I decided to try it out.

George and Julia

George was one year old and Julia was 34. I’d say this is a MISS.

Ruby and Ed

Ruby was 51 and Ed was 53. His age isn’t far off, but Ruby was quite a bit younger. Example 2 is MIXED.

Annie

I’m not exactly sure when this photo was taken, but I’d bet anything that Annie wasn’t 84! She is more like 20ish. Another MISS.

I decided to try an old photo with multiple people in it for the last example:

Coleman Family

I’ve never figured out who the little girl on the right is, nor the woman behind her who shows as age 14. However, Sarah, the family matriarch is seated. She is 97. Anna and Floyd, on the left, are 13 and 11. The three adults in the back are Mary, 34; Hartwell, 61 and Sadie, 35.  The website couldn’t find Hartwell’s face, but the other ages are so far off reality that this is a total MISS.

I might try this website out again in a year or so if it is still around to see if improvements have been made. Given the results of my five examples with a variety of vintage and modern photos, I’d say these results are rather poor.

Have you tried out How Old Do I Look? What were your results? Please leave a comment.