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 [1], 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 [2], 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 [3] 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 [4].

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 [5] 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.

How Beauty.AI's Pageant Entry Works

If you want to enter this robot-judged contest, download the Beauty.AI app [6] and upload a no-makeup selfie by Jan. 15.

Required Information

In order to avoid the biases inherent in human judgment, the artificial intelligence program behind Beauty.AI considers factors like age, ethnicity, skin color, facial symmetry, gender, and wrinkles during the deliberation process.

Selfie Entry Requirements

(Luckily, on the day of writing, I came to work makeup-free.)

The Selfie

Using natural light to ensure proper coloring and clarity, you can snap a selfie and submit. But who will the Beauty.AI robots decide is the "Queen" of beauty? Find out when the results are posted on Jan. 28.

The Results From Blinq's Attraction Ranking System

My reaction when Blinq's AI determined that I look 25 and "stunning" was, initially, one of guilty pleasure. However, this is a professional photo in which I am wearing a moderate amount of makeup and am flattered by soft lighting. Compared with the no-makeup selfie I snapped for Beauty.AI's robots, I almost look like a different person. This again calls into question the subjectivity of beauty, and furthermore, the attractive (or unattractive) features that robots simply don't consider in their rankings.

So before you go placing value in any hotness rating determined by a computer program, remember that the things that might make you unattractive to a machine could be the exact features that make you appealing to a human. There's no accounting for taste!

Another Reminder Not to Take These Things Too Seriously

. . . because this dog should totally be "godlike."