How to Date a Celebrity (Sort of) With the FaceDate App
If you’ve always wanted to date your favorite celebrity, well, I hate to break it to you, but your chances are low. Not Powerball lottery low, but close. So don’t waste your money on “how to date a celebrity” self-help books. Instead date someone who looks like your favorite celebrity with the new FaceDate app.
Students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed the FaceDate app, which takes superficial dating choices to an all new level.
During the account setup process, after uploading your photo and your personal information, you’ll upload photos of people you find attractive. You’re not limited to uploading photos of your favorite celebrities, but if you’re going to let a computer find you a date based entirely on looks, why not swing for the fences?
The algorithm behind the app then will search for people in its database that have facial features that are similar to the photos you uploaded. If the app’s algorithm finds a match between the preferences for facial features of two people in the database, it alerts them. Bingo! You may be chatting with and then dating a ringer for your favorite celebrity as quickly as that … and you don’t even need to swipe right.
The app will only search for matching preferences between people who are in a similar physical location. (You can read the white paper on FaceDate at the NJIT web site.)
Is this idea superficial? Sure. Is it kind of a cool use of facial recognition technology? Yeah. Is it appropriate in a world where the Tinder app is a thing? Absolutely.
FaceDate should be released on Google Play soon as part of an extensive testing phase. The students plan to eventually develop an iOS version too.