Asian, black, Latino or white? In the ethnic melting pot that is the United States today, these overgeneralized racial classifications are becoming increasingly inadequate when it comes to describing someone’s background. To address the shortcomings of these blanket classifications, a company called Kairos is using face-recognition software to estimate the percentage of a person’s ethnic makeup based on his or her facial features.
Kairos Diversity Recognition is a face-recognition web application that shows the diversity and nuances of ethnicity. Simply by loading a picture of a face to the site, users can see an estimate of the subject’s percentage of ethnic background.
For example, an analysis of the visage of actress Michelle Rodriguez indicates she is 50 percent Hispanic, 38 percent white, 5 percent black, 3 percent other and 2 percent Asian. In contrast, fellow actress Lucy Liu is estimated to be 99 percent Asian.
The company estimates that more than 7 million facial images have been loaded to its website so far.