Washington: Many people think they have a forgettable face and in order to look distinctive they use makeup and hairstyles, but now your face could be instantly transformed into a more memorable one without the need for an expensive makeover.
All thanks to an algorithm developed by a team led by Indian origin researcher in MIT`s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
The algorithm makes subtle changes to various points on the face to make it more memorable without changing a person`s overall appearance.
"We want to modify the extent to which people will actually remember a face," lead author Aditya Khosla, a graduate student in the Computer Vision group within CSAIL, said. "This is a very subtle quality, because we don`t want to take your face and replace it with the most memorable one in our database, we want your face to still look like you."
The system could ultimately be used in a smartphone app to allow people to modify a digital image of their face before uploading it to their social networking pages.
It could also be used for job applications, to create a digital version of an applicant`s face that will more readily stick in the minds of potential employers, says Khosla, who developed the algorithm with CSAIL principal research scientist Aude Oliva, the senior author of the paper, Antonio Torralba, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and graduate student Wilma Bainbridge.
Conversely, it could also be used to make faces appear less memorable, so that actors in the background of a television program or film do not distract viewers` attention from the main actors.
The study was presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Sydney.
