The #HowOldRobot is a website by Microsoft from 2015, that can tell how old you are by analysing an uploaded photo.

The robot was intended to be a first experiment in the field of facial recognition, but after just a few hours the website went viral – primarily in Japan. Users’ experiences are varied: sometimes the robot is eerily accurate, sometimes his estimation of your age is hilariously wrong. Furthermore: the age estimated by the robot based on algorithms can vary greatly per photo. According to the makers, the #HowOldRobot is a great illustration of the application of algorithms, smart analysis and “cloud computing”. The robot is part of the Project Oxford initiative, with the mission of using facial recognition to estimate not only age, but also gender.

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