Recognize This
Face recognition technology is getting really good. Yesterday I saw a link to Intel’s OpenCV library float through the mailing list at work and a note that someone wrote a PHP extension for it. “Interesting”, I thought. I hacked up a simple PHP script that would take an image and process it slightly to make detected regions more obvious. Here’s an example of the output. Not bad, huh? Then Jeremy tried another image, with some spooky results. Note that aside from the person, there are a couple more regions that the library thought was a face. If you look closer, the larger rectangle on the carpet encloses something that does have vague face-like features. Nice job, Intel.

05/10/2005 at 12:30 pm Permalink
Interesting…is there a URL for the PHP extension?
05/10/2005 at 12:46 pm Permalink
The one I used is Yahoo! internal one. I don’t know if there is a public one, but it wouldn’t be too hard to make something like that.
05/10/2005 at 1:21 pm Permalink
Let’s see if I’m as good as the library: that’s Tatiana, you, Shelly, and Jeff. What did it think?
06/10/2005 at 1:04 am Permalink
Now is php extension for free download?
06/10/2005 at 6:19 am Permalink
That is incredibly interesting. I would really be interested in the PHP library for that
07/10/2005 at 1:35 am Permalink
Oui, je suis très impatient aussi
17/10/2005 at 2:37 am Permalink
bonjour
mais ou peux t on la télécharger cette librayry pour php?
merci
Olivier
21/10/2005 at 12:39 pm Permalink
Hmmmm.
It also seems like, based on this very very very limited sample of 2
, that the library is biased toward picking several faces out of a crowd image, rather than one out of a photo.
I hope that’s actually NOT true, and it can be constrained to give me one face.
Cuz I could sure use an automated utility in PHP to do that extreme close-up and crop to 50×50 for the headshots of musicians.
http://uncommonground.com/events.htm
Most of the good thumbnails I did by hand.
PS That site is getting a face-lift soon.