4 ms·

How would you approach this problem?

• tuukkah 19y ago
  Step 1: Can you predict what someone's face will morph into with age? Step 2: Even if you can't, does the domain knowledge exist? Step 3: ??? Step 4: Facebook app aka profit!
  • cellis 19y ago
    very enlightening, and I'm not just saying that. yeah step 3, the implementation is probably all that matters, but in step 1, are you asking the user to do this?
    • tuukkah 19y ago
      What I wanted to express in the form of this tasteless humour was that AI isn't going to be your first problem, even though it could be part of some potential solutions. Modelling the task is the first step. Perhaps I'm wrong but my understanding of the field of AI is that it's trying to get the effects of human intelligence via computation. That is, you'd need to find a way human intelligence could solve the task. What comes to my mind is some kind of physiological modelling and simulation of the facial tissues. But perhaps it would be enough to do something more superficial such as extract features and their statistics from a lot of young-old pairs of photos and apply the same changes to given photos.
• jsjenkins168 19y ago
  As cool as that might sound (and technical hurdles aside), you have to ask yourself, do users really want it? Maybe its just me but I dont think seeing what you look like as an old person is a burning desire that users need satisfied..
  • nostrademons 19y ago
    Seeing what your girlfriend looks like as an old person, however, could be a fruitful market. I'd imagine the girls would hate it, but one would probably come up with a competitor where you put in your boyfriend's picture, food intake, and exercise habits and it shows you how much of a beer gut he'll have in 30 years.
    • run4yourlives 19y ago
      ooh, that's a good one. Perhaps an off-shoot on a top tier dating site then?
      • nostrademons 19y ago
        "I'm in like with you, but only when you're young and sexy"? ;-)
  • dpapathanasiou 19y ago
    Wouldn't law enforcement be interested in something like this? IIRC, the FBI started a pilot program along these lines a few years ago.
    • corentin 19y ago
      Such a technique is used to add a few years to photos of missing children.
• dpapathanasiou 19y ago
  Search for "Facial Image Morphing Algorithm" and check out some of the intro papers.
• dazzawazza 19y ago
  I've worked with the facegen library in a past life to create faces of various races and ages. They use a statistical model to create faces. There is also a Russian company whose name escapes me atm that also use a statistical model to generate faces. You could approach them to license their data.
• ivankirigin 19y ago
  Yes, you can predict it. A number of game engines have face aging techniques. Those are fairly advanced. Generally, the bone structure does not change, but the cartilage expands (ears and faces never stop growing) and skin sags. Deterioration of skin with liver spots, increased transparency, etc. are fairly well known. This doesn't sound like a very compelling business, but it could be fun.
• staunch 19y ago
  Just require pictures of the person and their parents, then morph them together more and more to show aging. It would be far from exact, but plenty good enough for a popular Facebook app. You can send me my royalties c/o news.yc.
• whacked_new 19y ago
  It just hit me that you could also look into face averaging, and make a fantasy application that would "beautify me." Then you could use faces of other races, eye colors, hairstyles etc. It wouldn't involve as much morph algorithm development as merging of layers and transparencies after finding key points. Then you could pitch it to, I dunno, plastic surgeons, hair stylists, or contact lens makers. I have the impression that a person nearing 30 is less likely to want to know how they would look old, than how they would look pretty, artificially or not.
• cellis 19y ago
  Wow, I need to come back to these old threads sometimes. I didn't realize this got any comments. Thanks