Who’s the Fairest One of All? This Computer Knows.

Computer scientists in Israel have developed a program that transforms faces into more attractive versions of themselves. The developers polled 68 men and women in Israel and Germany, who were asked to look at photos of white male and female faces and indicate which were the most attractive. They then developed an algorithm to determine the most attractive feature sizes and distances between features for each individual facial type. The program does not take into account hair color, wrinkles, blemishes, or other similar identifying characteristics, and sticks just to feature sizes and distances.

The image above is one woman before and after a photo of her face was run through the program. Is she more attractive in the photo on the right? What makes a person attractive anyway? According to the NY Times article that reports on the subject:

Studies have shown that there is surprising agreement about what makes a face attractive. Symmetry is at the core, along with youthfulness; clarity or smoothness of skin; and vivid color, say, in the eyes and hair. There is little dissent among people of different cultures, ethnicities, races, ages and gender.

Psychologists and feminists alike are questioning the validity of this new research, which was published in the August proceedings of Siggraph, an annual conference on computer graphics. At the very least, significant concerns have to be raised about how this computer program may be used in the future. However, the New York Times notes that the developers claim “the goal was not to argue that the altered faces are more beautiful than the originals,” but rather “to tackle the challenge of altering a face according to agreed-upon standards of attractiveness, while producing a result that left the face completely recognizable.”

NY Times: The Sum of Your Facial Parts