Face recognition relies on machine

Face recognition relies on machine learning, a subfield of ai in which computers teach themselves to do tasks that their programmers are unable to explain to them explicitly. First, a system is trained on thousands of examples of human faces. By rewarding it when it correctly identifies a face, and penalising it when it does not, it can be taught to distinguish images that contain faces from those that do not. Once it has an idea what a face looks like, the system can then begin to distinguish one face from another. The specifics vary, depending on the algorithm, but usually involve a mathematical representation of a number of crucial anatomical points, such as the location of the nose relative to other facial features, or the distance between the eyes.