Computer program can tell if someone is gay from a photo with 91% accuracy
Google searches for ‘Is my husband gay?’ are actually more common than searches for ‘Is my husband having an affair’?
But a new AI computer program can work out if someone is gay with 91% accuracy – just from a single photograph.
The technology has potentially chilling implications for privacy – as it could be used to ‘out’ closeted gay people – and may have worrying uses in states where homosexuality is illegal.
There are still 11 countries where homosexuality carries the death penalty.
Researchers ‘trained’ the programme using hundreds of thousands images from dating sites where the person had said if they were straight or gay.
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The program was able to work out if a man was gay with 91% accuracy and if a woman was gay with 71% accuracy.
The researchers believe that the program may be able to detect minute differences in facial structure caused by hormones in the womb – which may influence if someone is straight or gay.
‘Given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women,’ said researchers Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang.
