Microsoft’s how-old.net isn’t the most reliable age detecting software. The company set it up as a demo site and never expected it to go viral (over two million shares on Facebook already!).
Eason Wang, Senior Program Manager on Bing said on Quora “I directly worked on this project. The backend code is built by my team in Bing in collaboration with Microsoft Research. How Old Do I Look? mainly relies on 3 key technologies (i.e. face detection, gender classification, and age detection).”
So I tried it with a bunch of my photos and of a few of the popular stalwarts. The results are for you to see!
It adds anywhere from 2-20 years or takes away as many. I don’t think it’s ever pegged anyone’s accurate age!
Maybe that’s why it’s so popular. It’s hilarious to see how terribly wrong it goes. And as a Reddit user, no1asshole (that’s his user name for real. Man, I thought Tumbler had crazy handles.) says, it probably has to do with the fact that it was made by Microsoft, and people love beating up on them when their software goes wrong.
Basically though, it’s popular because it’s so wrong. The only ways it’d capture people’s interest is if it was always spot on or if it were wildly inaccurate.
So before it’s 15 minutes of fame end, here’s the people we tried it on:
- Shaktiman
Your childhood superhero. Sigh! This was just for fun, we don’t really know his age! But a superhero of 46 is unheard of.
- Rekha
“She’s a vampire,I’m telling you!”- howold.net
We know kid, we know. She had us fooled for years too.
- KRK
A controversy about looks and age, and we miss out on this handsome man? Oy vey, no!
- Kanan Gill
*Heartbreak* I know. He’s just 25. Though this app thinks he’s older than KRK and Rekha.
- Narender Modi
Well, even the app chose not to mess with him. He’s the only one whose guessed age was eerily close to his 64 year old self.
So I guess I’ve beta-tested this app for free for more number of times than I care to divulge. Go have your share of fun too!
PS: It works for group photos too!
PPS: It does not guess the age of puppies. Pffftt, NO, I didn’t try it! Just heard it around the workspace. Why would I even try to?
PPPS: Yeah, no cats either.
