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Tech

This Microsoft Site Guesses How Old You Are

With varying results.

How old do computers think you are? Microsoft has built a new tool to find out.

The website, called called How-Old.net, allows users to upload a picture of themselves or of others and have the facial recognition software predict the subject's age and gender.

The technology implements Microsoft's newly-released face detection application programming interfaces (APIs). It was created using a combination of APIs from the Azure Machine Learning Gallery, a collection of web interfaces that help users experiment in machine learning. Engineers from Microsoft explained in a post that they combined the face detection API with the Bing Search API from the marketplace to create the age-guessing site.

They said expected about 50 users to partake in the testing of the site but quickly had more than 35,000 users across the world. Most of those users were uploading their own photos rather than selecting from the pre-existing option from the site.

For what it's worth, the algorithm guessed my age spot on, but others did not find the service so accurate. Plug in your own photos on How-Old.net and see for yourself.