Microsoft's Age Guessing Site Is Spectacularly Wrong

[PhilipMichaels]

Microsoft built a website that guesses your age to showcase its cloud services. But that's not stopping people from having a little fun with the tool.

Microsoft's Age Guessing Site Is Spectacularly Wrong : Read more

 

[Dana Blankenhorn]

I am 60, my wife 58. The site said I am 72, and she's 28. Well, she's happy. But I better get busy with dinner or that trophy wife is going to leave me!

 

[Joel Baker]

12 years of four me. Says 45, I am 57. But people guess young on my age all the time so I guess it is in line with other people's guesses.

 

[ykki]

One out of seven ain't bad......

 

[SlitelyOff]

Cherlynn is very, very cute!

 

[whiteodian]

Some of the guesses actually seem accurate based upon the images. Some people just look younger than others. My first photo was about 5 years old. The estimate was 36. I would say it is off by 4-5 years. This would be a challenging photo as I had a beard and aviator sunglasses, but not too bad. I guess beards do make you look older. My second photo was my 5 month old son who it said was 2. Finally, I submitted a contemporary photo of myself. The guess, 39, actual age is almost 35. This is fun.

 

[zodiacfml]

It seems as good as a human guessing another's age.

 

[CherlynnLow]

haha thanks @SlitelyOff! We have a very good-looking team at Tom's Guide!

 

[Steveymoo]

I am 30, it guessed 46. *Cries in the corner.*

 

[Engerek01]

I showed 9 pictures and surprisingly it guessed 7 of them very close with only 1 or 2 years of difference. In the 2 other pictures it couldnt find the face. I would say it was very accurate.

 

[husker]

It seems to me that the subjects are making some goofy faces/smiles in a lot of the photos, as well as a bit blurry (Paul Wagenseil). Perhaps people should consider using a clear and expressionless picture and remove glasses to avoid adding wrinkles or other anomalies that the software may obsess over.

 

[whiteodian]

Cherlynn is very, very cute!

So is Sméagol.

 

[SteelCity1981]

said I was 36, it was only a couple years off. good enough...

 

[collin3000]

This article raised so many important questions. Questions like: How much more "learning" till Microsoft gets it right? And are any of the female TH staff single?

 

[PhilipMichaels]

Some of the guesses actually seem accurate based upon the images. Some people just look younger than others.

There are some things I think that throw off the engine -- beards, like you say, and glasses, especially. (It was off by nine years guessing my wife's age -- nine years in the wrong direction, I should add -- and I think it's her glasses that are the culprit.)

This is fun.

It is, isn't it?

 

[PhilipMichaels]

How much more "learning" till Microsoft gets it right?

It might help if you could input your correct age, so that the program could then adjust its predictive engine. But maybe that's not something you can easily incorporate into a site that takes you all of a day to build.

 

[Waltraute]

I tried the same photo at high and low resolutions and got results ten years apart (low res is best). I think women who don't wear makeup maybe lose out?

 

[JeckeL]

Some people I work with and myself have been messing around with it and it's actually been pretty accurate. It was myself (27) and two females (24 & 30). It consistently guessed 26 for me, 26-29 for the 24-year-old, and like 35 for the girl who's 30.

It reminds me of that app from a few years ago where you take a close-up picture of your own face, and based on the spacing of your eyes, cheekbones, mouth size, etc, and algorithm spits out an "attractiveness" rating from 1 to 100. It wasn't always very accurate or reliable... I remember the creator was on the Howard Stern show and they had some fun with it. They took pictures of inanimate objects like halloween masks and it gave some pretty high ratings

I tried the same photo at high and low resolutions and got results ten years apart (low res is best). I think women who don't wear makeup maybe lose out?

Yea I think a lot of weight is given to "fairness" of the skin. Which is great for people who wear lots of makeup.