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Facial recognition slipped into Google image search

Slimy   on 30 May 2007 - 22:18 · 9 comments & 7507 views

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Google has silently added face recognition abilities to its image search. It is now possible to search for images that only contain faces by appending the "&imgtype=face" query string onto the end of a search URL. There is currently no way to indicate that you only want to search for faces through the image search interface. As well, adding on "&imgtype=news" displays only images that are associated with news stories.

The technology appears to be the fruit of Google's 2006 acquisition of Neven Vision, a company that had developed techniques for facial recognition in photos. Google is apparently taking that technology to heart by experimenting with facial recognition online. Even cooler (or creepier, as the case may be), one day Google's image search may be able to find faces of specific people based on image analysis/recognition alone instead of relying on the text associated with that image to identify the person in the photo.

Link: Credit for the discovery
News source: Ars Technica

Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 9 additional comments
#1 magik on 30 May 2007 - 22:20
Who notices this stuff?!
#2 WICKO on 30 May 2007 - 22:22
Sweet! I've always wanted to know if I have an evil twin!!
(1 reply) #3 Jugalator on 30 May 2007 - 22:40
Wow, some results are impressive...
http://images.google.com/images?q=neowin&a...mp;imgtype=face

Like those photoshopped ones...
#3.1 Markus-J on 31 May 2007 - 01:02
#4 Nose Nuggets on 31 May 2007 - 00:22
so how do you use this?
#5 noPCtoday on 31 May 2007 - 00:24
read the article, NOSE.
#6 eAi on 31 May 2007 - 08:13
Very clever, and potentially useful if you want to search for a picture of a person.
#7 The_Decryptor on 31 May 2007 - 08:50
Aww man, i was hoping you could put in a picture of a person, and it would fine people with similar faces.

This is still cool though.

Last edited by The_Decryptor on 31 May 2007 - 09:06
#8 lawtai on 31 May 2007 - 13:03
heh yea, how do people notice these kinds of things...

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