There's a Tool That Will Tell You How Beautiful You Are . . . Using Science

When considering the concept of artificial intelligence, the possibilities seem endless. Could robots someday perform surgery? Teach school classes? Fall in love? And with gripping films like Ex Machina earning critical acclaim, it seems we're not the only ones intrigued by the future of intelligent programming. So . . . with all of these possibilities on the horizon for artificial intelligence, what do we use the groundbreaking technology for? To tell us we're hot, of course.

Yep, that's right. Similarly to Microsoft's How Old Robot, which used intelligent guessing to decide users' ages, new technology weighs features such as skin tone, facial symmetry, and wrinkles to estimate relative beauty. One AI tool, developed in conjunction with dating app Blinq to tell users "how hot" they are, has swept the Internet in recent weeks. Ranked on a scale from "Hmm.." to "Godlike," users who submit their photo often post the result to social media with the hashtag #HowHot. And now a second tool is being used to crown a "queen" and "king" of beauty — Beauty.AI is hosting the first-ever beauty pageant determined by a jury of robots.

While it seems like the downsides of asking robots to rate your physical appearance would be obvious, the popularity of these two tools indicates that thousands of users don't know (or don't care) about the inherent subjectivity of attractiveness. Suffice it to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . . and when that beholder is a robot, take everything with a grain of salt. The results of the AI beauty pageant won't be released until late January, but I decided to try both of the popular appearance-ranking tools out of sheer curiosity. Read on for the results and my reaction.