This beauty pageant will be judged by robots
Facebook/Beauty.AI
It’s no secret that beauty is subjective. But, what is surprising, is that it’s taken this long for scientists to come up with a non-subjective means of measuring it.
“Artificial intelligence systems have already surpassed humans in image recognition, and it is only a matter of time before robots will be able to evaluate human visual appeal, engage in fashion design, and even make perfumes,” said Alexey Shevtsov, the co-founder of Youth Laboratories collective in a press release.
“We decided to build a platform which will help bridge some of the most advanced humans - those who are interested in robot opinion and those developers, who are building intelligent systems to understand the beauty function.”
In partnership with Nvidia and Microsoft as well as Cyber Future, Future Technologies, Model Alliance and RYNKL, Youth Laboratories has launched Beauty.AI, an online beauty pageant, which will be judged entirely by artificial intelligence.
“We want to turn this into a quarterly contest, which will attract more algorithms and more people interested in getting an impartial perception of their beauty, taking into consideration their age, gender and thousands of other parameters.”
photo: Beauty.AI
Open to anyone in the world, interested applicants can download the app, snap a selfie and submit it to the robots for examination. Images will be evaluated based on symmetry, skin colour and wrinkles, amongst other things. To qualify, images must also be free of makeup, glasses and beards – yes, men are eligible too.
Along with the call for faces, Beauty.AI is also reaching out to data scientists interested in training the robot jury on how to measure human attractiveness. And while the contest is a fun way to get people involved and excited about the process, the long term goal is to determine what exactly makes people look more healthy, youthful and beautiful.
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“Beauty.AI is the first step in a much larger story, in which a mobile app trained to evaluate the perception of human appearance will evolve into a caring personal assistant to help users look their best and retain their youthful looks for as long as possible”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilco Medicine, Inc. and a consultant on aging.
Deadline for entry is Jan. 15, with winners announced on Jan. 28.
Do you agree with the idea of robots judging human beauty? Let us know your thoughts by tweeting to @YahooStyleCA.
