Ageing software predicts how Prince George would look like at age 60 in 2073

An ageing software developed by researchers at the University of Bradford in Britain, originally developed to identify terrorist suspects in crowds, also allows parents a peek at how their kids would look like at different stages in their lives. The technology uses visual cues from the child’s parents to forecast the future faces of a child.

Hassan Ugail, professor of visual computing at the university, shared about the software at the British Science Festival which the university hosted, according to a September press release of the academic institution. He says that the parent’s genes serve as the blueprint for how a person would look.

However, he notes that their software differs from current ageing software by the addition of an extra layer of information into the program’s algorithm. “The software can verify which traits the child may have inherited from the parent, and then use this information to create images for the child at different points in the future,” Ugail explains.

He says the software has an 80 percent accuracy rate, but that excludes environmental factors that coud still affect or alter the future appearance of a person.

To test the software, Ugail and his team tried it on the kids of Prince William and Kate Middleton – Prince George, now two years old, and Princess Charlotte. Startatsixty published four images of Prince George. Click here to see the photos.

Marie Claire notes that at 60, Prince George bears a physical resemblance to actor Liam Neeson. As for Princess Charlotte, below is how she would look at ages 2, 7, 20, 40 and 60, according to the university.

The software could also be used to reverse age a person which they tried on actress Angelina Jolie to see what she looked when she was six. “When we compared these to real images of the actress as a child, the similarities were striking,” Ugail says.

Ugail says beyond giving Brits and the rest of the world a peek at how their cute prince and princess would look when they are senior citizens, the technology could have other uses. He adds someone has approached him to turn it into an app to trace children who have been missing for years.

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