Microsoft releases face-recognition app – fails to recognise anyone’s age

Earlier this week, at the Microsoft’s Build conference in San Francisco, the company announced its latest app.

How Old uses “state-of-the-art cloud-based face algorithms” to assess peoples faces and guess their age.

However, instead of the internet exploding in gasps of “wow” and “ahh”, the algorithm-generated age estimations proved to be less accurate and more outrageous.

The users took to twitter to give thanks to Microsoft for exploiting their greatest fears… of looking 20 years older than they actually are.

I uploaded my photo to How Old and received a calculated age of 47…

I’m 25. Thanks Microsoft.

THANKS FOR NOTHING MICROSOFT #Build2015 pic.twitter.com/l4xd7fYCZn

— Owen Williams (@ow) April 30, 2015

Microsoft isn’t very good at guessing the age of baby dolls pic.twitter.com/B24m6ZBqtg

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) April 30, 2015

K pic.twitter.com/EEHZF0goMr

— Margarita Noriega (@margarita) April 30, 2015