A Bing image search can now take its best guess as to how old an individual is. Recently Microsoft announced How-Old.net which analyzes a photo and guesses how old you are. That analytic feature is now built into Bing image search as spotted by Microsoft News.
In my opinion the website is brilliant, not because of it’s accurate, because it isn’t, but because it’s a great social media campaign. The website itself has the hashtag #HowOldRobot at the top and Facebook and Twitter buttons on the bottom. Websites like this are great for sharing over social media. Below the social media buttons is the Microsoft logo which is just subtle enough to let people know who’s behind their few minutes of fun.
Having the age guessing feature on Bing images adds a little bit of fun to search results and when combined with other Bing features makes an overall better experience. To actually get Bing to work you just search for a person on Bing images and click an image. Once the image is larger there’s a button that appears that says “see age guesses.”
It’s worth noting that I had trouble getting the feature to work. I’m in the UK but even with Bing set to the US region it didn’t work for me. It did work however within the US.
Further reading: Bing, How-Old.net
