A fascinating blog entry about face recognition and face detection by Sebastian Marcel on Google Blogoscoped.
For those, obsessed like me by the future of image classification, key wording, intelligent search and automated work flow, this is a must read. You can even try out the algorithm and result on a free, yet very beta, site called Google Portrait.
The implications of such applied technology are huge as it would allow for an extremely simple process for retrieving images of people from databases with no or little text key wording. This image recognition abilities will be extend to other objects, like “tree” for example, ultimately eliminating the need for keywords and translations.
We are, of course , years away from this being an everyday scenario but you must agree, the future of photography looks very promising.
