Artificial intelligence (AI) which rates a user's physical and personality traits based on a photograph of them has been developed by the University of Melbourne and Science Gallery Melbourne. The Biometric Mirror compares the photograph to a database of what 10,000 people think of different facial appearances. The project is designed to raise awareness of the flaws of artificial intelligence - the algorithm makes decisions based on other people's opinions, not facts - and provoke discussion about how it is used. See more at Click's website and @BBCClick

When we see someone for the first time, we make internal snap judgements about them. After looking at the person for just a few seconds, we might note their gender, race, and age or decide whether or not we think they're attractive, trustworthy, or kind. After actually getting to know the person, we might find out that our initial perception of them was wrong. Well, it's a very big deal when you consider how our assumptions could shape how the artificial intelligence (AI) of the future make increasingly important decisions. In an effort to illustrate this issue to the public, researchers from the University of Melbourne created Biometric Mirror.

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. A new artificial intelligence system detects and displays people's personality traits from only a photo of their face. The system, called Biometric Mirror, investigates a person's understanding of AI and their response to information about their unique traits--which may or may not be correct. When someone stands in front of Biometric Mirror, the system detects a range of facial characteristics in seconds. It then compares the user's data to that of thousands of facial photos, which a group of crowd-sourced responders evaluated for their psychometrics.

In 2002, the sci-fi thriller Minority Report gave us a fictionalised glimpse of life in 2054. Initially, the movie evokes a perfect utopian society where artificial intelligence (AI) is blended with surveillance technology for the wellbeing of humanity. The AI supposedly prevents crime using the predictions from three precogs – these psychics visualise murders before they happen and police act on the information. "The precogs are never wrong. But occasionally, they do disagree."

IMAGE: Biometric Mirror uses an open dataset of thousands of facial images and crowd-sourced evaluations. In a world-first, University of Melbourne researchers have designed an artificial intelligence (AI) system to detect and display people's personality traits and physical attractiveness based solely on a photo of their face. The system, called Biometric Mirror, investigates a person's understanding of AI and their response to the information about their unique traits. When someone stands in front of Biometric Mirror, the system detects a range of facial characteristics in seconds. It then compares the user's data to that of thousands of facial photos, which were evaluated for their psychometrics by a group of crowd-sourced responders.