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View Full Version : Face/Text Recognition Digital Photo Search from Riya


Suhit Gupta
10-28-2005, 06:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1562/riya_face_and' target='_blank'>http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1562/riya_face_and</a><br /><br /></div><i>"You might think what I'm about to tell you is science-fiction, but a new Internet service called Riya -- currently in Alpha stage -- claims to be able to search your digital photos and identify faces and text with its proprietary recognition software. And, not only that, it can automatically tag them with the relevant information (via TRFJ). If the service works as claimed, Riya will definitely be opening a new chapter in how we organize our digital photos."</i><br /><br />While I was in school, I attended several talks that talked about this exact topic. The problem is that this approach has to be a heuristic one and your search is only going to be as good as your heuristics. Anyways, it is a very hard problem to solve with far too many inaccurate results traditionally returned (clearly the Department of Homeland Security is spending a LOT of money on facial recognition systems and we have all heard that it is much harder than they originally imagined). I guess we will have to see how the service actually does (site is down right now), but obviously if it does well then it would be a wonderful service.

Vikram
11-02-2005, 10:20 AM
To see face recognition in actual work, right now, visit Alpha launch of MyHeritage (http://www.myheritage.com). You can upload some photos now and judge for yourself how well it works (http://tarunmatta.blogspot.com/2005/11/myheritage-face-recognition.html). Currently they're showcasing an exceedingly cool demo (http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/face_recognition.php?s=1&lang=EN) :D called Find the Celebrity in You that shows you which celebrity you resemble the most; that is, if you upload your own photo. You can upload photos of real celebrities (well known, or even less well known) and see how well they get recognized. All this shows the power of auto-tagging and the usefulness of face recognition in photo searching and organizing, and the kind of functionality that MyHeritage and other companies will be releasing in the very near future.