On Photos' Face Recognition algorithm
I wrote an earlier post about face tagging in Photos and the challenge for users to work through their library and get everything tagged right. I promised then also some thoughts on how the face recognition algorithms themselves could maybe be improved. I continue to think that improving the user workflow around face tagging is actually more important than improving the algorithms, but there's no reason not to fight on both fronts. Mainly, the trouble comes from the fact that my kids look alike. Photos can easily recognize the difference between my own face and my wife's, but it can't tell apart my 2-year old (let's call him S) from my 4-year old (let's call him T). I've come across many (hundreds) of photos where S was tagged T, and have come to notice the things that help me as a human tell the faces apart where the Vision API falls short. First off, the big one: what mostly confuses Photos is that in the 2-year old pictures of T when he was 2, he looks v