Face Recognition Maps History Via Art 36
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."
Just Imagine... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
We'll call the site... (Score:4, Funny)