Face++: API for face detection – also detects gender, age, pose

http://www.faceplusplus.com/demo-detect/

by gagzilla • 12 years ago

127 50 12 years ago

huskyr• 12 years ago

I've tried this for a hobby project, and was quite surprised by the quality of the API. I'm a bit wary though because of the lack of a clear business model / pricing on their website.

arb99• 12 years ago

Looks interesting, might implement this on a project soon.

Their pricing is a bit iffy though... " The Face++ APIs are currently provided free of charge. However, Face++ may charge fees for future use of or access to the Face++ APIs or the Face++ services according to its sole discretion. If Face++ decides to charge for the Face++ APIs Services, Face++ will provide you prior notice of such charges. Face++ may also charge You when providing You a service different from the service under these Terms; for example, we may charge additional fees for excessive API use. "

not even a rough clue given as to how much they'll charge (could be reasonable, or very expensive)...

but, still, looks very good

benjamincburns• 12 years ago

Recognition leaves something to be desired. Detection classifies her as female, 40 years old ±10 years. Recognition apparently doesn't add metadata parameters from detection into it's weighting:

http://imgur.com/n23vVQT

vtempest• 12 years ago

http://challengepost.com/software/smileforce

ran emotional sentiment analysis from an ipad camera while user scrolled thru menu items. won a prize in salesforce $1 hackathon

chetangole• 12 years ago

It is not even detecting my face!

anonfunction2• 12 years ago

It needs a good photo of mostly just your face in order to get a good detection. Detected my face quite accurately, I'd try again with a headshot.

nly• 12 years ago

So you need to detect the face before you can detect the face...

Andrenid• 12 years ago

Doesn't work at all for me.

ILLEGAL_USE_OF_DEMO_KEY

anonfunction2• 12 years ago

You have to sign up and create an app to get the key. From what I could gather there is no limit or pricing on the site. Once you are in to the developer center they have you can see the docs and use the API. It's quite nice, even if it ages me at 31, a bit older than I am.

nnnnni• 12 years ago

I wonder if this could be used to filter out duckface pictures...

kp666• 12 years ago

happy to see this...was using face.com till facebook bought them :(

ninjaplease• 12 years ago

Meh. Betaface has had this for years.

ParvusPonte• 12 years ago

I believe this is a good place to plug a very usable open source computer vision project: http://openbiometrics.org/

Fantastic alternative you can hack with if you're allergic to APIs that "might" charge their free service in the future.

jklontz2• 12 years ago

OpenBR author here, thanks for the plug!

hackerboos• 12 years ago

I've been doing research for a facial detection/facial information API since Face.com was mothballed by Facebook.

Not loving the idea of relying on third-party APIs for the above reason makes this project is very useful.

Thanks.

balakk• 12 years ago

Another project that I think is really good is dlib : http://dlib.net

To compare how well it works compared to OpenCV's face detector: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsK0hzcEyHI

dlib is also great at picking out facial landmarks: http://blog.dlib.net/2014/08/real-time-face-pose-estimation....

Between dlib and OpenBR, I think almost all of these usecases can be covered without commercial APIs - if you have a large enough training set.

Face Recognition is a whole another matter though.

ape4• 12 years ago

Sadly none of these free/open projects can do gender, age, pose

mikejarema• 12 years ago

Also of note is clmtracker: https://github.com/auduno/clmtrackr

Its open source (MIT license I believe) and performs some of the same functions as Face++ like detection, "landmarking" and replacing features/mapping a mask to your face. It includes some fun demos as well.

NKCSS• 12 years ago

Lol, it doesn't like my picture much :P I'm a 31 year old white guy (ok, was 29 in the picture) and it tells me I'm probably 43 with 7 variance and black :P

V-2• 12 years ago

I'm in my 30s and the software thinks I'm 7 or 14, depending on the pic :) And I don't look this childish at all

downandout4• 12 years ago

I have some experience with computer vision [1]. It is non-trivial and requires real processing power to do it at scale. So I suspect they'll be charging soon unless they have a huge amount of funding. Other than that potential issue, this looks like a fairly usable, credible API.

[1] I wrote software to scan Facebook profile photos for overweight people. We store their ID's for targeting through FB ads.

afandian2• 12 years ago

Your footnote should win some kind of prize for "most terrifying inconsequential remark".

downandout4• 12 years ago

I literally LOL'd at this :) .

discardorama• 12 years ago

I think there's an unspoken rule on the internet: any piece of personal data will eventually be used for ad targeting.

The response rates for display ads are so abysmal that any edge can make a difference. CTRs (click-through rates) hover around 0.1%, so if you increased CTR by a slim 0.1%, you'd double the revenue!

tragomaskhalos• 12 years ago

For the last time, I am "Mr Stay Puft", I am a brand, not a real person. Please stop bombarding me with slimming products.

romanlevin3• 12 years ago

Can you actually target Facebook ads at specific users?

MatthewMcDonald• 12 years ago

You can target a group of specific users. There are some restrictions (minimum group size) but there are ways around it.[1]

[1] http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...

downandout4• 12 years ago

You could until a couple of months ago, and you still can with some significant caveats. Also, combining names and locations with other data from third parties gives some pretty awesome postal mail/email/telemarketing lists for companies in this space.

mandeepj• 12 years ago

I think hair restoration\transplant companies can also target users with ads by looking at their pictures. If they are bald then show them our ad

downandout4• 12 years ago

Yes, there are a few characteristics that are mainly visual and hard to identify any other way. Bald is one, wearing glasses (segmented by sunglasses/regular glasses) is another.

bsenftner• 12 years ago

How do they get away with using all those celebrity photos?

Founder/CEO of the 3D Avatar Store here. We do most of what they do: face detection, facial feature detection and tracking, smile/expression analysis, and facial recognition. And we go further with 3D Reconstruction into performance animation ready 3D geometry, automated lip sync generation and so on.

romanlevin3• 12 years ago

I'm guessing because China.

chacham15• 12 years ago

A lot of people dont know or dont care. E.g. look at mightytexts website[1].

[1] http://mightytext.net/

bdg• 12 years ago

This is fun, but it thinks I'm about 20 years older than I am, and the grey-beard Swedish sysadmin was identified as a black woman.

quasarj• 12 years ago

Yep. I'm a 30 year old bearded man. It said it was 99.7% sure I'm a 47 year old woman. At least it got my race right! Though it was only 77% sure of that.

binwiederhier• 12 years ago

This is really awesome. Good job! And the response time is pretty fast too.

helloshow• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Kairos - facial recognition API apihttp://www.kairos.com/

coleca• 12 years ago

Thanks for the mention. CTO of Kairos here.

We offer a web API that will perform 2d to 3d facial recognition which helps greatly when dealing with natural world images as opposed to mug shot type of controlled imagery. We turn the 2d image into a 3d model and then normalize the pose and lighting before performing the matching leading to higher results on everyday pictures.

Check us out at www.kairos.com

neals• 12 years ago

So what are some people building with this? I'm curious of the possibilities, which probably are endless.

amelius• 12 years ago

What comes to mind is a generic "upload profile photo" for websites, where the system can automatically crop your uploaded photo. Or even just to check that it is a "valid" photo.

Not sure how the gender/age info would be useful.

That's the best I can come up with. My brain actually works best in the opposite direction (problem->solution) :)

arthurcolle• 12 years ago

is this a project by the people at Face.com? I know they were acquired by fb some time ago so it would be neat to know they are still working on related stuff post-acquisition

dheera• 12 years ago

What's the principle behind gender detection? Is it based on machine learning algorithms trained with a huge pile of data, or is there some inherent geometric difference between male and female faces that I'm missing?

matsiyatzy• 12 years ago

There's definitely geometric differences between male and female faces. The most distinct difference is that the male chin tends to be larger, giving the face a more "square" shape, while female faces have smaller chins, giving the face a slight "almond" shape. And I'm sure there's more subtle differences as well.

sinzone• 12 years ago

Test it in the browser: https://www.mashape.com/faceplusplus/faceplusplus-face-detec...

marcelocamanho• 12 years ago

Already getting 504 errors. Such an API cannot be free unless they got a huge amount of funding...

Face++: API for face detection – also detects gender, age, pose

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