Who better recognizes faces: Google, Apple or Microsoft

Face recognition technology traditionally refers to applications of artificial intelligence systems. This is a real challenge for programming, and only recently computers have learned to cope with it relatively successfully (see photo on the right).

There are only three free programs on the market that can recognize faces in photos and sort photo galleries according to these features: Google Picasa, Apple iPhoto * and Windows Live Photo Gallery. The latter is the oldest (appeared a year ago) and technically imperfect (it recognizes the presence of a face, but does not distinguish the faces of different people from each other). The development of Google and Apple are much more advanced, and they were born this year.

Blogger Josh Lovenson decided to thoroughly compare these three programs based on half a thousand 12-megapixel photos from his personal collection.
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* Apple iPhoto is included in the Apple iLife paid kit, but often comes bundled with a computer for free, so it can still be considered free with some degree of conventionality.

Another program Adobe Photoshop Elements did not participate in testing, because it is paid.

The full review can be read on the link above, and we will publish only the main conclusions.

All tested packages showed difficulties with people who had sunglasses, hats and hooded tops. Some difficulties arose in the presence of ordinary glasses and facial hair. Programs fully confirm the fact known to any terrorist: if you put on sunglasses and a hood, then your face cannot be recognized. Of the 50 photos with large sunglasses, not a single face was recognized.

Also, there were difficulties with people distorted by various emotions - a smile, an open mouth and raised eyebrows completely disable the ability of the software to recognize the person’s identity.

There are other strange false positives. For example, the program Windows Live Photo Gallery found a face in such a photo.



It is quite natural that faces that were not in the focus of the camera were not recognized.

In general, according to the results of testing, Google Picasa won the first place in terms of quality of work, Apple iPhoto received the second place, and Microsoft developed the list in the list.