Software adds years to a face in seconds
SEATTLE — Let’s assume you are, say, 25 — bag-free, sag-free and wrinkle-free.
Would you want to see a pretty realistic image of what you’ll look like at age 70?
In a few months, you’ll be able to do just that.
A free program created in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington will let you upload a photo of yourself at any age — 2, 10, 25.
In about a minute, you’ll see the “old” you. If you dare. The main researcher who put together the ageprogression software, it turns out, hasn’t run her own photo.
“I didn’t do that, no,” said Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, an assistant professor who helped create the program.
She is 33, and her software just isn’t something she is interested in using for personal reasons, she said.
Such a reaction isn’t surprising, according to pioneering research by Tony Greenwald, a psychology professor at the university.
He is part of a team that has conducted unrelated research about how we react to a photo of an old face, versus a photo of a young face.
“We react more negatively to elderly faces,” he said. “It makes it clear that being old is not a pleasant thing. Why should we want to know what unpleasantness faces us?”
Kemelmacher-Shlizerman said the software will have more important uses, too.
It will be used, for example, to find long-missing children who have become adults.
In putting together the program, the researchers used photos they found online in which they could determine the age of the person, images from soccer-team photos and beauty competitions, for example.
They found that, over time, our faces simply get bigger. Our eyes get narrower. Lips get narrower. Noses get larger. And, of course, our skin sags, and wrinkles — along with bags under our eyes — develop.
In a couple of months, when the program is publicly available, probably on the school’s site, the question will be: Do you want to know or not?