Microsoft’s new face-detection tool, which guesses age and gender from a photo, has sent self-esteem levels plummeting around the world

How Old Do I Look: another way to feel bad about yourself online

Finally! Another way to feel bad about yourself online!

Microsoft’s new facial analysis tool How Old Do I Look has sent self-esteem levels spiralling down across the world since being released on Wednesday.

Using “state-of-the-art, cloud-based algorithms” to recognise human faces, the tool takes a stab at guessing your age and gender from a photo alone, with the results ranging from flattering to decades out.

With How Old Do I Look?, Microsoft is harvesting thousands of faces. Uh, isn't that creepy? | Geordie Guy Read more

Predictably, social media users have responded with both outrage (from those whom the site identified as more mature than their actual years) and smugness (from those who submitted unrepresentative and filtered shots), and there were 15,000 tweets about #HowOldRobot within 24 hours of the site’s launch.

“Sorry if we didn’t quite get the age and gender right – we are still improving this feature,” the site says apologetically, as if it were not painfully obvious from its repeated identification of a reporter who has just turned 24 as having the face and countenance of one who is either 30 or 31.



#HowOldRobot tries to identify the age and gender of people from photos.

The Guardian can confirm that the tool has directly resulted in the sale of at least one pot of eye cream, though it is too early to say whether it will lead to a global uptick.

Microsoft engineers Corom Thompson and Santosh Balasubramanian said in a blogpost on Thursday that interest in the tool had wildly exceeded their expectations, with more than 35,000 users (29,000 of them from Turkey for some reason) “within a few hours” of their sharing it.



“We were shocked ... what a great example of people having fun thanks to the power of ML [Machine Learning]!,” they wrote.

Thompson and Balasubramanian also expressed surprise that so many people wanted to upload their own photos to the site, rather than using photos found online.

How Old Do I Look identified Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, in this photograph, as 52: five years younger than he is – but it picks British prime minister David Cameron, 48, as a full decade older.

Tony Abbott, 57, is looking good for his age, according to How-Old.net Photograph: Deniz Toprak/EPA/how-old.net

British prime minister David Cameron, 48, is identified as 58 by How Old Do I Look. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images/how-old.net

Try the tool for yourself – before the brands kill it dead.