Twitter/Michal Kosinski

A Stanford University professor who went viral last week after publishing a study that suggested artificial intelligence (AI) can tell whether a person is gay or straight based on photos believes AI will also be to determine a person’s IQ and their political leanings, simply by looking at their face.

Michal Kosinski is cited in The Guardian saying that sexual orientation is just one of the many things that AI will be able to determine in the coming years by looking at our faces.

He predicts that self-learning algorithms with human characteristics will also be able to identify:

• a person’s political beliefs
• whether they have high IQs
• whether they are predisposed to criminal behaviour
• whether they have specific personality traits
• and many other private, personal details
• It’s possible to infer a lot amount of information by looking at someone’s face.

“The face is an observable proxy for a wide range of factors, like your life history, your development factors, whether you’re healthy,” Kosinski reportedly said.

When AI-powered computer programmes are given access to photos of lots of faces they can learn how to distinguish certain traits.