Haunted Mansion Statues Inspiration?
Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are all in the technology rush to build superior facial recognition technology.
There's a lot at stake for each company as they can offer businesses and governments a lot of value. For example, using facial technology police departments can identify witnesses to a crime.
Google/Shutterfly and Facebook can use the technology to match like photos together. So if a consumer tag a face as their mother, the businesses can create Mothers day promotions using photos that match.
Google Photos
I upload all my iPhone pictures to Google photos. It's a good way to backup photos. In addition, the search criteria are awesome. I can search for "pink house" and instantly I'll see all the photos that contain a pink house.
When you enter search functionality, you'll see some face thumbnail images the ability to see photo using facial recognition. It's a cool feature to see where else I took people photos.
Interesting Side Effect
On a recent trip to Disney World, I took some pictures of the statues in the waiting queue at the Haunted Mansion. It's a very popular photo spot for kids. There are five statues in a semi-circle.
A few months after the trip, I noticed that Google Photos did a facial recognition on one of the twins. I was surprised to find some photos that I took in the Massachusetts State House matched up to one of the Twin statues.
Apparently Google thinks that the Lafayette statue in the Massachusetts Statehouse is the same face as the one at the Haunted Mansion. Was Lafayette the inspiration for one of the twins?
What do you think? Are they the same? Is Google correct to tag them as related? Did Disney Imagineers use Lafayette as an inspiration for the statue?