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Face Recognition Maps History Via Art
mikejuk writes "Face recognition techniques usually come with a certain amount of controversy. A new application, however, is unlikely to trigger any privacy concerns — because all of the subjects are long dead. 'FACES: Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems' will attempt to apply face recognition software to portraits. Three University of California, Riverside researchers have just received funding to try and piece together the who's who in history. 'Almost every portrait painted before the 19th century was of a person of some importance. As families fell on hard times, many of these portraits were sold and the identities of these subjects were lost. The question we hope to answer is, can we restore these identities?' If the algorithm can be fine tuned we can look forward to the digitized collections of museums and art galleries around the world suddenly yielding a who-knew-who social network graph that could put more science, and computer science at that, into history."
Think of the possibilities...
If I could know for sure that the eldest daughter of the 1st Earl of Huntshire was a good friend of the young wife of the wealthy merchant heir James Strickthorpe, well... it would completely change my life.
Waiting for Facebook to auto enroll them, give them a timeline and a social graph.
Waiting for you by the bridge
Perhaps you'll change your mind after a long Prussian winter.
Have gnu, will travel.
That kind of project is a sham. Face recognition software works by precise geometric measurements and by identifying unique and precise skin patterns. Neither of those are present in paintings. Paintings vary a lot more and still require human abilities to interpret facial characteristics.
CorpseBook.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
There's a real case there. Imagine a vampire, who has changed his identity every 20 to 30 years for centuries. He'd fake his own death, and move on with enough riches to start over.
Now they'll have a lineage of the names he used, where he lived, and quite likely be able to identify trends in his feeding patterns. The truth will be known, and there will be nowhere for him to hide. The lineage of his crimes will haunt him forever.
I guess the important part of that is, if vampires were real. Imagine being the walking dead, and trying to get a drivers license, passport, or other photo ID. It'd be damned near impossible.
You know, that'd probably make a pretty good TV show. They could pair him with a ghost and werewolf. They could show him trying to live life in a big city, like London or Boston, for example. Nah, that'd never work. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.