Coca-Cola’s Facial Profiler app comes up short

Coca-Cola recently launched an online promotion with Facebook that promises to match people with their lookalikes. Coke created the Facial Profiler application to promote its Coca-Cola Zero no-calorie soft drink. It believes consumers won’t be able to tell the two beverages apart. Get it? The Facebook app uses facial recognition software, similar to what law enforcement officials use, according to the Wall Street Journal. I uploaded several photos and the results weren’t so hot. I got three different matches for three different photos, none of them very close. The software tends to choose matches based on facial expression as much as anything. To its credit, the software did admit the matches weren’t the best. The highest match accuracy it gave for my selections was 57%. It might do better if there were more photos in the database.

So maybe I’ll try back in a few weeks.

Try the Facial Profiler here.