How an MIT algorithm can make your selfies more memorable

A tantalizing development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could help boost the popularity ratings of selfie takers and online daters. Scientists at the institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have taught computers to predict, with near perfect precision, which photos of faces, nature scenes, or other objects people are most likely to remember. Though similar predictive algorithms in the field of machine learning already allow computers to predict information by automatically completing phrases people type into Google search or by recognizing people to tag in photos on Facebook, scientists have not until now been able to use these tools to teach computers to predict what will be memorable to people, a skill that even humans themselves lack, Aditya Khosla, a PhD student in computer science at MIT, told The Christian Science Monitor. For selfies and other portraits, this development means an app might one day tell people which one from a group of photos is likely to get the most likes on Instagram, or to attract more suitors on a dating site. The team in 2013 developed an algorithm that can slightly modify pictures of faces to give them a more memorable flair.